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Technology Curriculum (Released to the web September 4, 2007) The July 2007 draft of the technology curriculum for Readington Township schools demonstrates a persistent misdirection of time and resources that has existed in American public schools for decades. By concentrating on a particular tool, rather than on a job which must be done, the curriculum pins students to a single point on the technology timeline and ignores the broad wave of progress which has historically swept us into new areas of invention, communication, and methods of work. Historical perspective can help us understand this issue. In the 1980s, a middle school or high school on the frontline of technology in the classroom would likely have had students sitting at minicomputer terminals, probably connected to a DEC PDP or perhaps an HP 3000 via serial cables, typing in BASIC programs copied from a booklet produced by the math department. An advanced high school class might have introduced students to other languages. It was thought that introducing students to these programming languages, along with keyboarding skills, would be necessary to help them excel in their eventual careers. Also in the eighties some schools in fortunate or wealthy areas would put emphasis on introducing students to Visicalc or Lotus 123 spreadsheets. And, we cannot forget word processors like DECMATE, WordMate or Multimate. In lower grades there were the APPLE IIe computers found in so many computer labs in the same period, occasionally accompanied by a Commodore 64. Simple games were often used to introduce younger kids to these systems. While a handful of students were undoubtedly inspired to learn more on their own due to these efforts, the ironic thing is that when most of these students reached the start of their careers, the specific products they had been taught in school no longer were relevant at all. The time they had spent typing in BASIC code or learning minicomputer based word processing was simply time lost. The personal computer revolution had made obsolete everything they had studied and different skills were needed. Fast forward to 2007. Much of the Readington technology curriculum is focused on learning to use three specific products: Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. While some of the curricular goals are broad enough to support other things, too much of the actual work comes down to these three products. Just as in schools three decades ago, we continue to hone in on a particular point on the technology timeline rather than give students the knowledge and understanding to find their way in the changing world when they come of age. There is no better example than the growth of the internet. In 1997 the internet was an amusing sideshow with promise for the future. In 2007, ten years later, the internet is an indispensable part of American life in business, academia and personal arenas. Were sixth graders in 1997 adequately prepared for the role the internet would play in their careers as they graduated college? Of course not. Few would have predicted how the internet would grow in those ten years, just as few will successfully predict today how the internet or some as yet unknown technology will appear in 2017. And that is the point. By focusing on the job which must be done instead of the specific tools that are available now, we can better prepare our students for future change. For instance, instead of teaching students how to use certain "safe" websites for research, we need to teach them how to evaluate all sources of information for accuracy, bias, relevance, qualifications of the author, and similar qualities. That includes advertising, print and broadcast media, research, textbooks and non-fiction books, as well as websites, wikipedia, blogs and instant messaging. The underlying techniques of critical evaluation cross over to all media and prepare students for anything that comes along in the future. To be certain, the internet is already the primary source for students to gather (and often plagiarize) information. For what we can glimpse of the future, the internet is poised to become far more than a repository of information. Web based applications in business like http://salesforce.com are already the norm, and there isn't a single developer of mainstream business software that isn't considering writing or is already writing web based applications for their niche. Technology companies like Microsoft and Google are set to make the internet the next frontier in software. Microsoft with their push for Microsoft Live intends to integrate the net into every aspect of personal computing. Google is doing the same, and their sketchup product is being used by designers in many industries already. Their blogging and email applications are also already well established. The internet has a wealth of applications already available, and yet the Readington curriculum does not address any of it in any meaningful way. Even more potentially disruptive to the status quo is the push within the software industry to change, once again, the means by which applications are created. Generations ago, software was created by programmers who used specific text based languages and compilers like COBOL, or FORTAN or C. In the next iteration, languages became more visual, allowing programmers to cut and paste and create an application using graphical tools like visual BASIC, Visual C++, and many other proprietary compilers. Object oriented programming, in which simple objects are joined together to create a larger or more complex application came of age at the same time, along with a greater emphasis on internet based programming tools like perl and JAVA. Today, the goal of many organizations leading the charge of the next generation is software than can be easily created by anybody using internet based tools. Yahoo has it's Pipes product already available, Microsoft is trying a product called popfly, and IBM is trying their QEDwiki on business users. Tools like these will allow anyone with a browser to write their own software. Again, though, the Readington curriculum does not direct students toward this probable future in any meaningful way. What all of this means is that today's middle school students will likely be toying around with the creation of web based software applications on their own by high school. They are already using internet based applications on their own at home. What it also means is that the draft proposal of the Readington technology curriculum will do little to help these students use upcoming or even current internet applications in ways that are meaningful, ethical, and worthy. Instead, the curriculum is overly weighted toward learning the specific features of three particular software products which may not be relevant in a few years. The areas in which we should put much far more emphasis in our technology curriculum include:
It is the broader implications of technology in communicating, learning and exploring which are far more important to the success of our students than learning how to indent a paragraph in Microsoft Word or how to make a slide zoom away in a Powerpoint presentation. Indeed, these specific sorts of things in a particular program are picked up by students and adults as they need them and are likely to change in a few years (if not sooner) anyway. A curriculum based on teaching specific features of a single software package is more about the fears and inadequacies of educators than it is about preparing students for their future in a technologically oriented world. We must get away from our adult perspective and our own apprehensions about not understanding how to use a technology introduced in our own timeframe and instead concentrate on preparing our students to thrive in a future world of constant and accelerating technological change. Our students do not need formal lessons on Powerpoint slides so much as they need the critical thinking skills and evaluative techniques to use any technology wisely. Fortunately, changing our emphasis in the curriculum is easy. Aligning to the state mandated goals is not difficult, because those goals are fairly broad. Lessons are widely available (on the internet, of course) for our district to co-opt in order to teach the kinds of things in the list above. All we need really do is agree to re-examine our technology curriculum based not on our point in time today, but on the potential for change in the future and on the lessons we should learn from technological change in years past. For further study:
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