The main argument of this article is rather straightforward and can be summarized as follows. Technology and education researchers are frustrated by the lack of uptake by teachers of new educational technologies. These technologies are present and a lot of work has been done on how to integrate them in the classroom. Work has also been done on how to educate teachers on the use of this technology. Despite this, the rate of adoption of these technologies by teachers is low. Instead of getting frustrated and blaming the teachers themselves and their shortcomings for not adopting these technologies, however, technology education researchers ought to listen carefully to the criticism of technology offered by teachers and the reason why the latter are sometimes reluctant to integrate the former into their practice. The article argues that such a focus on teacher critiques of educational technologies constitutes important ‘intellectual capital’ for educational technology researchers.   

While the article does not actually advance any solutions for meeting the critiques of technology by teachers, now does it suggest any possible next steps forward, or even what to do with this new ‘intellectual capital’ that education technology researchers now dispose of, it does do a good job of articulating quite a few teacher critiques of technology in the classroom. These are valuable in their own right. Some of the grounds on which teachers resist new technology in classroom are as follows.

Teachers often resisted the adoption of new technologies as a kind of protest against their imposition in a top-down manner by administrators and policy-makers. Teachers consider that these people have little knowledge of the on-the-ground realities of the classroom and impose the adoption of new tech from on high. Teachers were reluctant to invest the time and energy into a process over which they have little say and no ownership.

Teachers were reluctant to invest the time and energy into learning the new tech. Often teachers have significant knowledge gaps in these areas, and getting up to speed would take a lot of time. Plus, the field is always changing, requiring significant investment in continual upgrading. This can lead to ‘change fatigue’ in teachers over the long run.  

Some teachers were uncomfortable with their lack of knowledge in the area of tech when compared to that of some of their students. Some teachers felt that this undermined their role in the classroom as the keepers of knowledge and therefore undermined their authority.

The implementation of new technology requires not only an up-front investment, but continued investment in maintenance and upgrading. Technology requires almost continuous troubleshooting and maintenance and the teachers did not feel comfortable in this role. It also requires outlays in new software and hardware. But administrators and policy-makers often neglect to invest in this type of ongoing maintenance for their technology.  

Teachers felt that policy-makers and administrators sometimes fetishized technology as an end in itself. This, while teachers themselves were often sceptical that technologies create useful value-added in learning. They tended to argue for a more targeted, judicious approach to technology adoption, and only to meet specific learning objectives. These included offering the possibility of greater scaffolded learning, learning which was more multimodal in nature, and which helped connect classroom learning to students’ home lives. Overall, teachers were more likely to adapt the technology to their classrooms’ own specific learning needs, rather than to seek to adopt the tech wholesale, for its own sake.

I find some of these criticisms to be quite cogent and thought-provoking. I think that teachers are right to be critical of new technologies and the costs which they imply, and to seek to integrate it into their classrooms in a targeting fashion, rather than fetishizing technology as an end in itself as some boosters are prone to doing. I think teachers are right to be wary of the personal costs to them of adopting new technologies. From a labour and democracy perspective, they are right to question why they should spend all this time learning new tech and modifying their approach to teaching, when they have no say over the implementation of new technology and have no ownership over it; when its implementation is happening by dictate from the top down.

We could take the criticism of new technology in the classroom one step further, to look at its dynamics at the societal level. It is not surprising that policy-makers fetishize tech in the classroom for its own sake and prescribe its adoption, though they lack an understanding of the real needs on the ground. Policy-makers are simply playing their role as shills for the capitalist class, whose job is to transfer resources from the public sector into private hands. In this case, they seek to augment the profits of the large tech companies. Moreover, the implementation of tech in the classroom facilitates the implementation of the Neoliberal agenda in education. As funds are transferred to tech companies, the implementation of new tech in the classroom functions as a substitute for real improvements in learning outcomes that could only come with increasing funding to public education. Implementation of new tech is therefore perfectly compatible with the Neoliberal agenda of slashing government social spending to the bone. This dynamic also explains why so little is ever invested in maintenance of the new tech. The point is not to improve outcomes; it is merely to shift resources to tech companies while cutting social spending. After this has happened, it is of little interest if the hardware and software are kept up.

For all of these reasons, my position as a teacher would likely be to strongly resist the implementation of new tech in the classroom, both on the grounds of the larger social dynamic which I have described and which is served by it, and the additional work that it would cost me to implement. I would make sure that any tech I did adopt would be simple and easy to use for me, would require little troubleshooting and maintenance, and would be targeted to meet the specific learning needs of my students.  

Article:

https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/content/pdf/10.1057/9781137385451_4

The ‘utopian’ view of technology in education is one which sees the introduction of ICTs in education as both necessary as well as sufficient for educational reform. Here, the introduction of ICTs into education is seen as a sort of panacea. The ‘nostalgic’ view of education in relation to the introduction of ICTs, on the other hand, considers that the introduction of these technologies will seriously undermine traditional objectives, rooted in personal enlightenment and democratic citizenship. Sahay in his article seeks to take a middle path between these two poles, arguing neither that technology is without possible pernicious consequences and can be uncritically adopted, nor that technology is solely destructive to education and must be completely rejected. Instead, Sahay believes that ICTs should be adopted with appropriate levels of criticality and their appropriate adaptation to educational goals. Throughout the article, when Sahay speaks of ICTs or of technology in education more generally, he seems to have in mind online university programs and courses. It is the value and risks of these modalities that are discussed in the article.

In assessing the potential benefits and risks of online learning, Sahay takes as his criteria their impacts on the autonomy of the students. This concept has numerous elements. What he really seems to be describing here is human freedom, which has the following components. The ability to do and work in the world to earn a living; individual access to education; individual choice as to which types of learning to pursue; the level of individual freedom and its constraint by society at large, in particular the capitalist marketplace. There is also one dimension of autonomy which Sahay relates to the ability to participate in a group, society, culture with others. This seems to be an element of autonomy which Sahay takes from Habermas. The article asks whether online learning increases or decreases autonomy according to each of these parameters.

Online learning offers the promise of greater access to education. However, as I have already argued in another post, online learning tends to not be as accessible as is often promised. There are limitations when it comes to access to the technology or to internet connectivity. Time and money, related to social class, offer additional barriers to participation. We could also cite the typically higher cost of online education programs. However, it is true that online learning offers some increases in accessibility when compared to brick-and-mortar institutions.

It is true that online learning can offer skill development, especially in high tech, which facilitates labour market integration. In this sense it increases the autonomy of the learners as far as participation in work. In fact, this is also one of the criticisms of online learning. The model tends to encourage the focus on more narrow types of ‘skills,’ which can be more easily packaged and reproduced at scale, over and against deeper and less tangible forms of ‘education.’ This also has to do with the fact that online learning has attracted a lot of private sector investment. This pulls online education in the direction of the dissemination of skills which will benefit private sector profit-making.

As a result of the above, online learning tends to skew heavily towards tangible skills and away from more traditional fields of education such as the arts and social sciences. Inasmuch as this is the case, the course of study for students in online environments is curtailed. This reduces the autonomy of the learner in these settings.

As mentioned, Sahay considers connections to others and belonging to certain groups as a fundamental aspect of autonomy. This may have to do with the way in which the individual self and identity are constructed in relation to others and groups. The Russian developmental theorist Vygotsky is cited, in addition to Habermas. On the one hand, ICTs can facilitate social connection. Clearly, it is much easier now to find like-minded people through the internet. However, the quality of these connections is much lower. It is certainly the case that online learning suffers from rendering the creation of strong relationships with colleagues and instructors far more difficult, if not impossible. This is related to issues of interpersonal trust, which are absent in online environments. This is one of the major drawbacks of e-learning in my opinion, and as such reduces the autonomy of the student.

Finally, online learning substantially intersects with the capitalist economy, corporatization and globalization in ways that pose substantial threats to the autonomy of the individual in their relationship to the larger society. Online learning has been a major site of investment for large corporations, especially tech companies, who see through its promotion, the possibility of selling more of their products. This involvement of large corporations in online learning tends to push this education in a direction which conforms with capitalist interests. It becomes the training grounds for the preparation of the high-tech workforce. As I have already mentioned in another post, this only causes the value of the labour of such workers to fall, while the profits of their employers rise. While these high-tech, workplace skills are taught, critical thinking and reflection on social issues is slowly removed from the list of educational objectives. This makes it harder to understand and to call into question the capitalist order. The fact that online learning tends to be guided by the profit motive leads to the standardization and reproduction, in addition to the simplification, of the educational content. This lowers the quality of the education delivered through this medium. Finally, online education offers the promise of greater reach and lowered costs to traditional universities. This allows the latter another tool to continue the process of rationalizing their operations along capitalist and neoliberal lines. It allows them to outsource a number of their operations, and to deskill their workforce. Instructors need no longer be tenured faculty, but can be low-level sessional instructors. Not only does this contribute to the reduction of good middle class jobs in society, it works to further lower the quality of the education available.

Despite these potential problems with online learning, Sahay remains sanguine that ICTs can be successfully integrated into educational structures. What is required is a critical understanding of their potential negative consequences, and the will to adapt them to meet larger educational needs, instead of confusing the ‘means’ of ICTs with the ‘ends’ of education.

Article:

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1371&context=jais

The purpose of this article is to draw methodological insights from the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory, and to subject to the process of ideological (or ‘immanent’) critique certain ‘myths’ regarding the use of technology in education.

The Frankfurt school refers to a group of social theorists, operating in Germany from about 1930 onwards, working in the broadly Marxist tradition, who set out to interrogate issues such as technology and social change, as well as various other social and cultural factors that serve to pre-empt radical social change and uphold the status quo. Included in the Frankfurt School proper are figures such as Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno. Habermas is a younger member of the Frankfurt School, and French theorists Althusser and Barthes share some of their theoretical frameworks with the School.

The basic approach which Friesen takes from these theorists is that of the ideological or ‘immanent’ critique. According to the Frankfurt School, no knowledge is free from ideology. It is always created from a particular standpoint and serves some or other human interest. As such, many ‘facts’ or ‘common sense,’ generally accepted as true or valid, are actually political and ideological. They serve certain interests while foreclosing others. These bits of ‘common sense,’ which Barthes called ‘myths,’ need to be interrogated. Though they appear to be self-evident and the realities they describe appear universal, timeless and natural, they have in fact been socially-constructed at a point in time. Their genesis must be revealed. Moreover, the knowledge must be shown to be political by revealing whose interests are served by it. Finally, alternate narratives concerning the same events or issues must be excavated to reveal whose interests have been marginalized and how this can be remedied.

This is the broad approach which Friesen takes to three ‘myths’ about technology in education. The first of these is the myth of the ‘knowledge economy.’ This myth says that here in the West, the whole economic paradigm has shifted. The Industrial economy is a thing of the past. We are no longer competitive at industrial manufacturing. Now, the only way to compete globally is through third-sector, knowledge economy products and services. The myth also posits the ‘knowledge theory of value,’ basically a modification of Marx’s labour theory of value, which says that the value of production is determined by the knowledge that goes into it. In the classroom, the ramifications of such a view have been that children are seen as future knowledge producers who have to be filled up with cutting-edge knowledge. The role of education is to prepare students for production of this type, rather than targeting past objectives such as personal development, fulfillment and autonomy, and responsible citizenship.

This ‘myth’ of the knowledge economy and the concept of the ‘knowledge theory of value,’ were promoted by Daniel Bell, an arch-neoconservative theorist of the 1980s and 90s. And it is not hard to see whose interests such a ‘myth’ serves. It ensures that the next generation of knowledge economy workers are produced in order to continue generating capitalist profits in this sector. However, this view of the economy does not actually correspond to the reality, since in the new economy, there are even more low-paid service, hospitality and health care services workers than there are so-called knowledge workers. This shift in the structure of education to the knowledge economy model does not benefit these workers, since they have received an education which has not allowed them to access higher paid knowledge work, while also having deprived them of what were formally the other objectives of education: self-development, moral and spiritual enlightenment, democratic citizenship. But perhaps this too serves the ruling power structure as it limits the ability of these low-level workers to think critically about their society and their place within it and instead encourages in them the fetishization of technology and knowledge work.  

The second ‘myth’ which Friesen addresses is the one stating that online learning makes education accessible to ‘anyone, anywhere, at any time.’ This was the prevalent discourse in e-learning around the turn of the century and it promised to democratize education by making it accessible to everyone, regardless of where they lived, their social class, and even their race. In fact, it has proven that this myth overstated the technology’s transcendence of such limitations. First, access to education via internet is never seamless and free of material physical constraints. Moreover, access to online education remains differentiated according to socio-economic class. Not everyone has access to reliable high-speed internet. This is certainly true of people in the developing world, but is also the case for certain underserved populations in the developed world. Also, the fact that one can access education via internet says nothing of whether one has the time and money to pursue additional study. This too, is largely a function of social class.

The ‘anyone, anywhere, anytime’ myth therefore serves to promote online education by giving the impression of democratizing access to learning. In reality though, previously-existing class divisions are only reproduced through it. At the same time, it serves the interests of the neoliberal university, increasingly responsive to profit motives. Online learning allows the university to spend less on physical infrastructure. It can also begin to lower labour costs by restructuring its workforce. It can hire fewer tenured faculty, replacing them with an army of sessional instructors and tutors who do not design courses, but only implement previously-made ones year after year.

The third ‘myth’ which Friesen addresses is the one which states that ‘technology drives educational change.’ This is a sort of technological determinism which posits the development of technology as a quasi- autonomous force which responds to some formula and is free of the social relations underlying it. This ‘myth’ states that technological changes is not subject to substantial societal control and instead inexorably reshapes society in its image. The message that educators receive is that they must unquestioningly adopt and integrate each new technological innovation, or risk being rendered obsolete. The truth of the matter, however, is that technological change emerges out of social relations, and that technologies are subject to control and limitation by social forces in the interest of the social good, should sufficient political will exist to do so. By the same token, individual institutions such as the educational system are free to accept or reject discreet technologies, according to whether they serve larger educational purposes, and to modify and adapt them to maximize such outcomes.

Article:

https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/pdf/42980245

What this article seeks to do is to examine the views of Freire and Illich on technology in education, to attempt to see if these can be reconciled in order to provide a framework to guide the use of technology by radical educators.

Freire and Illich have not tended to be seen as very compatible by education theorists. Freire spawned the tradition of Critical Pedagogy. While he saw education as one of the cultural tools used by the dominant power structure to give itself legitimation and to indoctrinate citizens into compliance, it could also act as a site of possible consciousness-raising, where oppressed people and classes could be given the critical skills to understand and to resist the power structures which dominate them, while also being given the more technical skills to make their way in the world. Freire’s view of the use of technology was an outgrowth of such a view. For Freire, technology tended to operate on behalf of the ruling capitalist class, and served as a bulwark of capitalism against socialism and to intensify social inequality. Still, he believed, like Marx, that in itself, technology was essentially politically neutral. It could be put to any use – for the ruling class or for the people – depending on how it was used. As a consequence, technology itself could have some emancipatory potential, if this last could be properly harnessed. The goal of teaching about technology, therefore, is to give students a critical understanding of how technology works, in order to give them the ability to resist the manipulation and propaganda to which technology is often put. Students in the radical classroom, moreover, should be made to see the emancipatory potential of technology and how it could be used to create a more just society.

Though Freire and Illich began their careers as colleagues and friends in the 1970s, they eventually fell out over their differing views of education. While Freire gave rise to an entire lineage of educational theory, Illich’s work was not taken up by educators. This has to do with the anarchistic and idiosyncratic elements in Illich’s educational thought. Illich was basically opposed to formal schooling. He believed that education only served to indoctrinate students into compliance with the power structure. He believed that the imperative to continuous education (a by-product of modern society) was itself essentially bad, and that humans could live perfectly good lives without much education, simply reacting to the natural world. Illich’s view of technology was similarly sceptical. He believed that technology constituted another set of human tools, but that often, these tools, rather than serving human beings, actually became their masters. Humans ended up serving the tools as ends in themselves and these introduced another complicating factor in the relation between humans and nature. But Illich was not completely technophobic, he also felt that individuals should learn to use the tools of technology, in order to avoid being completely dominated by them.

The article finds, therefore, that the views of Freire and Illich on technology in education are not that incompatible. Though technology has a tendency, inasmuch as it is introduced in a class society riven with inequality and exploitation, to simply work to further this inequality and exploitation, entrenching and protecting the interests of the ruling class against the rest of society, there is little choice but to teach students to use technology. Critical knowledge about the latter will help them to protect themselves against some of the dangers of technology, such as manipulation and propaganda that is diffused through it. Moreover, by learning technology, students are given the tools to survive economically in world dominated by technology. Finally, since, at root, technology itself is politically neutral, it is also bound to contain some emancipatory potential. The other goal of technology education, therefore, is to teach students to detect this potential and to use technology in the pursuit of social justice.   

Article:

https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/pdf/10.2304/pfie.2007.5.4.431

After reading the article on the city in Scandinavia that banned Google in the classroom, and listening to the CBC Spark podcast on the parent of a child in Victoria’s school district 61 who refused to sign the permission slip allowing his child to use Google classroom, I have the following thoughts.

I think that in trying to determine whether this is a good or bad thing, to have Google be such a dominant presence in education, we have to make the distinction between the impacts on the individual user of Google, and the larger societal impact.

When it comes to the negative impacts on the individual user, my feeling is that the concern over using Google is probably a little bit overblown. To understand why, we need to examine what the potential negative impacts on the individual could be.

It is clear that Google collects the personal information (name, email address, phone number) and the data (websites visited, items viewed, etc.) of its users. Why is this a problem? Google’s model, and that of all of these large tech companies, is to gather personal data in order to sell this information to third parties and/or advertisers so that adds can be customized to the user. Google claims that it does not do this with its education software. Maybe this is true, maybe it isn’t; there isn’t really any way to know, especially since the data of the individual leaves the country and there is little accountability for how it is used. But if your data gets sold to third parties or is used to targe advertising, is this really a problem? The fact that your data gets used to target advertising to you is not the end of the world; however, when it comes to your data being sold to third parties, this could be a potentially greater problem. This could be used to target you in various phishing scams, or could even leave you vulnerable to getting hacked. But all of our data is being used to these ends all of the time, and it is usually never more than a nuisance if precautions are taken.

But the fact that Google exports the data of its users to the US could be a bigger problem, since there, it is subject to different, laxer, privacy laws. There are concerns, for example, that one’s data could be swept up by agencies such as the NSA under anti-terrorism laws. But, as the podcast makes clear, this is unlikely to be a concern for the average user, and anyway, we have very similar legislation here in Canada.

If I don’t really buy the claim that use of technologies like Google is that much of problem for the average user, I am much less sanguine about the larger social impacts of allowing Google to take such a dominant position in education. To understand why, we have to try to divine the logic of why Google has striven to become such a dominant player in education. What does it get out of providing free software to schools? It says that it does not make money from the data, and that it makes little from the sale of Chromebooks and their servicing. Why is Google doing this then? We don’t know for sure, but we could speculate. Maybe Google is providing its services for free or at low cost as part of a long-term strategy to create a monopoly for itself in this sector. This is what tech companies often do. We have seen Netflix do this for example, or even Amazon. Offer very low-cost services (not even turning a profit in the short term) just in order to get a huge market share. Once you are in a dominant market position with no competitors, and users are dependent on you, you can start raising prices sharply to make back some profit. Another possibility is that by getting kids used to using Google products, there is a high likelihood that they will continue to use them as adults (this is mentioned in the podcast). It could also be that Google is using kids’ data to help develop their AI, which then becomes profitable on its terms.

How do we assess such possible consequences? Clearly the fact that we are participating in the development of a tech monopoly is bad. Monopolies are bad for all kinds of reasons: for the economy, for society, for consumers. But is the case of Google really any different from how we have participated, and are still participating in, the creation of Amazon’s monopoly, or Walmart’s? Is Google particularly bad? I don’t know.

Some even larger social consequences of using Google (and other types of tech in general) preoccupy me more than the particular case of Google. I have the following questions. If we are teaching kids the skills they need, and which the tech economy demands of its workers, are we not just responding to the dictates of the markets and private business, and thereby abandoning one of the primary objectives of education, which is to teach students to be critical of the society in which they live, including a society run by billon dollar tech companies? If we are training kids with these tech skills, will this not simply lower the value of these types of skills so that tech companies can lower the wages of these types of workers? The class structure of society will not have been altered, only that the requirements for access to each class position will have changed. Is tech in the classroom not participating in and facilitating Neoliberal education policy? If education is showing innovation and advancement as a result of free and cheap tech, does this let governments off the hook for not investing in education? To what extent are tech ‘skills’ taking the place of other more traditional skills at which the students of today are failing (literacy, for example)? Is tech even good for kids (i.e., does it contribute to the ADHD, the shortening of attention spans, mental health issues, etc.)? These larger questions about tech in general in the classroom actually preoccupy me a lot more than the specific issue of whether or not Google should be allowed in the classroom.