Working At The Edge

Make School Different: Digital leadership & Transformation

Is our use of tech working against us? 🤔

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Yesterday’s post was about focusing on the human. Today, I’m wondering how our use of tech in schooling is working against our human focus.

The question was sparked by this article in the MIT Technology Review:

Eliminating the Human

The author, David Byrne, isn’t specifically talking about education, but about life in general. While technology has provided us with many affordances, there’s a big constraint: eliminating human connection.

I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has an unspoken overarching agenda. It has been about creating the possibility of a world with less human interaction.

Evidence he presents: online ordering and home delivery, digital music, ride-hailing apps, driverless cars and automated check-out. 

Think about how each of those limits or eliminates human interaction….

My mind went to education and test-prep programs where learners work in isolation to build skills, usually for some kind of standardized test.

We’ve got lots….way too much…of this going on in our schools….driven by obsession with standardized test scores.

But what other uses potentially reduce human interaction among our learners: productivity software used in isolation (type documents, presentations), quiz/flashcard apps, single player games to learn facts, some types of internet research…

These are all pretty low level uses of technology. What others can you think of?

And then there are ways to use technology to enhance human interaction; connecting with experts outside school, Google docs for uncovering group thinking, multiplayer games….

What else?

If we are focused on humanizing schooling…and schooling is taking place in an exponentially changing world of tech and non-tech, we will have to consider our use of tech through the human lens.

—–

âť“ Provocations:

How are we in schools using tech to increase human connection and not eliminate it?

đź’Ž Resource:

What are the effects of technology on human interaction?

🧠 Mindsets:

Inventor

đź’ˇ Mindshift:

Navigating from tech uses that eliminate/reduce human interaction to tech uses that support human interaction.

📣 Drop your thoughts in the comments, or in the Facebook group, and feel free to share resources. 🔥🔥🔥

Randy Ziegenfuss
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