Speaking recently at the International Society for Technology in Education, U.S. Federal Communications Commission member Jessica Rosenworcel pointed to concerns about “the homework gap.”
Rosenworcel was referring to research suggesting that 70 per cent of U.S. teachers assign homework requiring online access, even though one-third of households do not subscribe to broadband internet.
Fortunately, the socio-economic/ cultural divide is not as pronounced in Canada. StatCan reported in 2016 that 84.1 per cent of households have a home computer and 87.4 per cent have internet access.
In 2017, the Canadian government reaffirmed its commitment to household internet access, saying: “[The Canadian] government has a strong net-neutrality framework in place through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.”
Given the educational opportunities evolving technology has provided, that comes as reassuring news for educators.
But enough about tomorrow’s kids. They’ll be just fine. They eat up technology like snack food. What about my generation, the postwar 1940s kids?
To admit to having been fascinated by comic-strip crime fighter Dick Tracy’s 1946 two-way wrist radio would probably condemn me to Fogey Land in the eyes of today’s kids.
They take for granted that in 2018 some online markets list a smart watch with Bluetooth, camera and unlocked cellphone far exceeding the possibilities of Tracy’s watch radio — for under $40.
More relevant for us aging Tracy fans, Apple’s new watch will chart atrial fibrillation and issue a warning to take it easy if things are heading south. That’s certainly more useful than tracking down the whereabouts of Mumbles or Flat Top Jones.
More recently, one of the other handiest gadgets ever showcased on Star Trek was the universal language translator. Far out on the horizon of science fiction just a few years ago, several smart-language translator devices now provide real-time two-way translation for 30 or more languages and are available for about $80.
Then there is school design. A new “high school for the future” we built in the 1990s was extensively wired to accommodate desktop computer networking. Wi-Fi? Bluetooth? Who knew?
Well, nobody. That was just 30 years ago, and even now nobody knows or fully understands the impact that the digital age is having, every day, on school buildings and the organization of teaching and learning.
What we do know for sure, what we are gradually coming to understand, is that technology has brought instant access to a limitless world of information for students.
For some educators, it will still be considered heresy to suggest that there’s really no longer a need for students to memorize facts or dates, despite the suggestion that technology has enabled lesson objectives to move beyond routine memorization to a place where much greater emphasis can be placed, finally, on higher-order thinking.
That would be educational progress as exponentially dramatic as the evolution from Dick Tracy’s fictional watch radio to the Wi-Fi/4G cellphone devices most kids carry today.
Thanks to access to information technology, many classroom lessons now can move as quickly as possible toward higher-order thinking tasks.
When students are not just required to memorize a piece of information but are asked to do something with that information, to analyze it and then place it in context, correlating it with other existing information — that’s progress.
Gone are the days when students simply regurgitated information for a quiz or test. Classroom information technology allows students to move quickly from needing to know information to needing to know how and where to find the information they need to know.
That is as profound a step forward as that first footprint on the moon.
At the highest level of learning, students will be asked to demonstrate their knowledge by producing an originally expressed understanding of the lesson, based on fact, not opinion.
None of this implies throwing out the “basics” — the ability to spell, write effectively, calculate basic mental arithmetic, demonstrate a fundamental understanding of the importance of interpersonal communication or be able to express thoughts logically. All that will, if anything, become even more important.
The greater emphasis on collaboration as an essential job skill along with learning to respect, even understand someone else’s point of view, will be the foundation for individual and group problem-solving in the classroom.
My generation is already scrambling to keep up. My generation’s world of tomorrow is already today’s generation’s yesterday.
Now, how do I synchronize this Apple Watch?
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
