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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
9.1 Candidates will be able to understand the pros and cons of technology from a variety of critical perspectives and apply that understanding to evaluating current and potential technology in schools and society.
In Neil Postman's The End of Education, he discusses the need a for narrative in education, a singular focus that all stakeholders can share in order to achieve the goals of education. Of course, this begs the question, "do all people share a similar idea of what the goal, or end, of education is?" Of course the answer is no, and Postman dwells on this issue and others in his groundbreaking text. He presents a number of critical perspectives, ten overall, through which readers may view the current state of education and technology's place within it. These persepctives illustrate how technology affects people, places, and organizations, and how bias is created through the use of technology. This was our first text in ET690, and it set the stage for us to question everything we new about the systemic successes and failures of education.
I have two artifacts for this Key Concept. The first is a paper I undertook to write about The End of Education, in which I took Postman's idea of technology's Faustian bargain with our society and examined whether this was always necessary. My foci were 1:1 programs and Flipgrid, though my arguments could be extended to many other technologies. I leaned, as well, on Ursula LeGuin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which describes a place which is a utopia except for one obvious problem. She asks whether a place is worth living in if we cannot ignore this one problem, in spite of the rest of the place being perfect. I relate her one glaring problem to technology and ask if we are doomed to take the bad with the good. My ultimate finding is that we are not doomed, but those privileged enough to wield technology are beholden to do a better job of sharing and instructing others with it.
My second artifact is a more practical application of my arguments in the first artifact. Given the opportunity to create my own narrative to follow, I created the Mindful Growth Narrative to suggest ways to reduce the Faustian bargain of Postman. This took the Growth Mindset of Carol Dweck and combined it with the theory of mindfulness in order to produce a more open educational framework in which people worked together for the good of all. It was a bit idealistic, but when discussing narratives that work as overarching theories of a system, I think ideal is the way to go, especially as the need to better use technology in schools and society grows.
9.2 Candidates will be able to demonstrate how technology can be used to empower some and disempower others in schools.
Sherry Turkle's book Reclaiming Conversation was our second text in ET690, and she specifically focuses on how behaviors have changed since the advent of smartphones. Learners today treat the world around them differently than people of my generation and social interactions have changed, thanks (or no thanks) in part to the ubiquitous device we all carry with us. When a game exists where everyone at dinner puts their phones in a pile and the first to check it pays the entire bill, there should exist a societal concern, and Turkle addresses this concern.
What I really enjoyed about Turkle's text was her metaphor of the Three Chairs. Taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson, she imagined the need for private space, respresented by these chairs. The first chair was a private space for personal reflection; the second for friendly dialogue; the third for societal or public interactions. Each of these chairs is required for people to live mindful, happy lives, and she sees smartphones, and more generally, technology, getting in the way of us sitting and achieving the peace we need.
In my artifact, I compare each of the chairs to a method educators can use to empower groups who may be currently disempowered. These groups are teachers themselves, students, and stakeholders such as parents and the community. I reflect on technology tools that can be used in the classroom to aid those who are lacking in power to become more empowered versions of themselves. I discuss using Google Docs, Forms, and Classroom, as well as Flipgrid, for individual reflection and self-evaluation to better own own inner monologue. I then suggest technology-assisted peer review through G Suite to help create those friendly encounters Turkle views as so important. For the third chair, communicating and being transparent with the stakeholders of a school in general becomes vital, and I extol the virtues of Remind and a school's LMS as types of technology that can bring larger groups together.
Turkle is not hopeless, though the technology use she sees frightens her. I think we have the opportunity to take the technology at our disposal and use it for more than just Fortnite and cat videos. We can use it responsibly and in a reflective manner to strengthen connections between individuals and within ourselves.
9.3 Candidates will be able to use critical frameworks to think about the value of specific technologies.
As in this first objective to this Key Concept, I return to the artifact of my Postman paper. As mentioned before, Postman uses ten critical perspectives to view technology and education. In my paper, I considered multiple technologies and their value to educators. Postman views technology through the lens of the Faustian bargain, but I feel that technology should not be viewed in such a dire light.
If educators and the general public do a better job of evaluating the pros and cons of technology, there would not be as many detrimental issues with technology. While some look at the smartphone as problematic because it draws attention away from what is important, how the owner uses this piece of technology is of utmost importance. As I argue in my paper, we have not lost the instruction booklet to technology; we simply must remember that the purpose of technology, like the pedagogy in our classrooms, should always be prominent. With the great power of technology comes the great responsibility of being more critical with our technology purpose, and if we are, I believe we can rein in the issues many critical frameworks expose.
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