Adjusting to the Advancement of Technology

I am, according to the teachers at my school, a technology guru. I will admit I get a little excited when new technologies are released, the annual pop celebrations over the new Apple products and anything that buzzes, whirs and flashes, tends to catch my attention. Be it a camera, watch, computer, phone, drone or toy, I am drawn like a moth to flame standing with my mouth open staring at it in wonder.

As a matter a fact, I’m not alone in this. It seems many schools fall into the trance of buying new technology. Technology companies are pushing technology down schools throats. And fearing they might fall behind, schools are buying it in droves, most likely before they are ready for it or even knowing what or how they will use it. It’s exciting to think that a school can offer its students technology that they can use during school to help them become “career and college” ready. But  what about the other side of the coin? If the teachers aren’t ready or the school isn’t prepared, the devices become under-utilized and obsolete before they can be tend to gather dust in the corner or worse become rewards for good behavior. 

I was an early adaptor of iPads in the class room. I purchased 5 to set up an iPad center for students to use. I searched the App Store for all the apps that had anything to do with art or creation. Which there are many. Every month I would show the kids these new apps and they would love doing them. They liked to do apps like Let’s Make Pottery and Foldify, to name a couple. Both of these are cool apps but I soon felt they weren't pushing the kids creatively. The students would just copy each other or use another creation and just print it out. To the students' they were games and they were right. 

As our school was moving toward a 1:1 environment, I began to worry that the kids were spending too much time on "the screen" and not working with real materials.

Jonathan Ive, Head designer for Apple recently said:

"So many of the designers that we interview don't know how to make stuff because workshops in design schools are expensive and computers are cheaper,"

"That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three-dimensional objects and not make one."

Our schools are becoming flat. Student work is becoming more and more digital. And I’m worried it will affect how my kids react in the real world and how they make things. Kids need to use their hands to learn. 

So I’ve put away the iPad Center as it was. We still have iPads but we use them for specific purposes like photo manipulation, Seesaw portfolios, Stop-motion movie making and coding. The students, don’t complain much but as soon they pick up the cardboard or the clay and the iPads are soon forgotten.