Michael Bugeja’s opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job,” struck a nerve today.  He started by noting that for “most of this decade, professors embraced the pedagogy of engagement, wooing students via technology and ignoring the costs because traditional methods, from textbooks to lectures, purportedly bored students who multitasked in the wireless classroom.”  He then noted the massive cuts occurring across higher education, and suggested that these “facts alone merit an immediate technological and curricular assessment, or else hundreds more professors and staff members could lose their jobs in the coming weeks and months. You may lose your job.”

Bugeja raised the valid point that too often technology decisions are made without factoring in true costs, but he then suggests that teaching centers (like the one at which I work) are part of the problem for pushing the use of technology for teaching and learning.  His final paragraph reads:

• “I challenge anyone objecting to these arguments to look in the eye of secretaries, janitors, adjuncts, advisers, and professors of eliminated programs and say that avatars, clickers, social networks, and tweets—and the pedagogies, IT expenses, and teaching centers supporting them—are more important than feeding their families. To believe we can afford both indicates how incapable many of us are of making the difficult choices that the times require.”

It would be easy to dismiss this article if I did not think that his way of thinking was not reflective of many in mainstream faculty.  I have seen a number of faculty in higher education, as well as teachers in K-12, who see technology as an evil.  In many ways, they want to wall off their classes from the outside world.

That image of a wall is particularly relevant today, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  President Reagan has always been one of my favorites, and one cannot think of him without hearing his exhortation:

“Mr. Gorbachev…tear down this wall!”

That is the line most remember, but I like his comments later in the same speech, in which he stated “this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

Bugeja’s comments to reduce technology in order to save jobs ignores the realities of a changing world…much as the Berlin Wall did.  Technology in and of itself is not evil, and technology integrated into education is opening minds, not closing them.  The participatory web and open access to information has created freedoms that never existed in the past.  Those freedoms directly and positively impact learning.  As Derek Bruff noted in a comment to Bugeja’s piece:

“…point out that Bugeja has focused here on the cost of instructional technology, but not on the benefits to student learning. There’s plenty of research that shows that student learning is positively affected by instructional methods that involve more active student engagement before, during, and after class. Technologies that support or facilitate such instructional methods are certainly worth exploring, if our goal is student learning. When conducting a cost-benefit analysis, it’s only appropriate to spend as much time thinking through the benefits as it is thinking through the costs.”

“…if our goal is student learning…”  Well said, Derek!  If one shifts the microscope from technology to student learning, one might find many traditional classrooms in trouble!  President Reagan made his speech in 1987, and during that same period, Chickering and Gamson developed a seminal work on teaching and learning, their Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Instruction.  They synthesized fifty years of research on teaching to develop these principles:

Good practice in undergraduate education:
1. Encourages contact between students and faculty
2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.
3. Encourages active learning.
4. Gives prompt feedback.
5. Emphasizes time on task.
6. Communicates high expectations.
7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Rather than cast technology as an evil, I would suggest that technology is a powerful tool that encourages contact between students and faculty, provides avenues for reciprocity and cooperation among students, creates new venues for active learning, enables more timely and prompt feedback, and gives new opportunities to keep students on task.  High expectations can now be communicated in multiple ways across social media that students are using, and these diverse and multiple paths respect the talents and new ways our students are learning.

We certainly need to be fiscally prudent with taxpayer and tuition-funded monies, but now is not the time to build walls and isolate our students from a 24/7 wired world.  Instead, we need to actively help our students create the learning networks that they will need to thrive in the 21st Century.

So to Mr. Bugeja and others who agree with him, I say “Tear down this wall!”

Ada Lovelace (per Wikipedia) “is today appreciated as the ‘first programmer’ since she was writing programs-that is, manipulating symbols according to rules-for a machine that Babbage had not yet built. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities.”  Wikipedia goes on to explain:

“During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes. The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include (Section G) in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognized by historians as the world’s first computer program.”

I first became aware of Ada Lovelace while in the Navy.  The Department of Defense computer program “Ada” was named for her.  Ada Lovelace Day, March 24th, was created by Suw Charman-Anderson to “to draw attention to women excelling in technology” by having everyone publish a post on this day about a woman in technology she or he admires.

I certainly have some fantastic role models in my PLE, so thought I would highlight them:

Laura Blankenship

danah boyd

Martha Burtis

Kim Cofino

Vicki Davis

Gabriela Grosseck

Jane Hart

Gayla Keesee

Jennifer Jones

Michele Martin

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Sarah Robbins

Barbara Sawhill

Elaine Talbert

Sue Waters

Then again, being surrounded by women who excell at technology is old hat with me.  My twin daughters grew up digital and continue to this day to use technology.  Melissa Frail is at MathWorks and Stephanie Watwood works out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.  Ada would have been proud of them…and all the women listed above.  They all will serve as wonderful role models for my two granddaughters, Molly and Marin.

My colleague Jeff Nugent just returned from a week of fly fishing in Western Virginia, including the story of the largest trout he had ever caught – an 18-incher on Mossy Creek (picture of fish here). However, what I “caught” today was an interesting metaphor associated with his forced disconnect from being online 24/7. He said it took a couple of days to stop wondering what he was missing on Twitter, and then a realization that, just as there would always be fish swimming by 24/7 and he would only catch some (if lucky), so too it is okay to simply catch and release from Twitter, savoring those you reel in but not fretting over those you miss. This Tweeter creek will continue to flow and you do not have to fish 24/7.

Sounds like good philosophy…and I don’t have to fib about the ones I let get away!

At the same time, I am mindful of some points Wes Fryer made today in his post “Here for the Learning Revolution.” What is fantastic about the new twitterverse is the continuing conversation unfolding. You can miss some…but you can also get up to speed pretty quickly as you join back in. For instance, I blogged yesterday about the amazing unfolding of the Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety and Success, spearheaded by Vicki Davis. This conversation is continuing to unfold and now includes a Goggle Group page, a collective tag “ad4dcss” (with 28 sites tagged in Diigo in the first half day), a wiki, and a growing number of members. A TweetScan for “ad4dcss” shows 32 tweets in the past day. A conversation is beginning to expand about a critical issue that is capturing the passions of some great teachers. Please join in yourself! As Wes noted, conversations can begin in Twitter or one blog, move to another blog, circle back around to Twitter again, shift to an expanding wiki or other social media site, move to Elluminate or Skype, and even show up in face-to-face gatherings…such as our Monday morning coffee sessions at our Center for Teaching Excellence. While pieces may seem disconnected, a synergistic whole emerges. I find this invigorating and encouraging for our future!

Thanks, Jeff, for the great fish story and the even better life balance suggestion. And thank you, Vicki, for having the passion to make sure certain conversations DO take place!

[Photo Credit: Savethewildup]