The Tool Imperative or A MacGyver Complex

"ddraper You really think that school exists primarily to teach kids to use the tools? http://post.ly/10zuH @irasocol stars as #MacGyver."

 Darren (not Don) Draper [1] had said this...

"But you're not really buying this, are you Scott? You really think that school exists primarily to teach kids to use the tools? Whatever happened to student-centered pedagogy? Whatever happened to creativity? Whatever happened to thinking?

"Show me a kid that's learned how to learn, one that can think, can process, and critically evaluate. Show me a kid that's learned how to analyze reality, with or without the use of technology...

And I'll show you the kid that will master the tools of the future, simply because they invented them in the first place."

Now what I had originally said was this...

"The issue is this -

"In order to be lifelong learners it is essential to understand and know how to function with the information and communications technologies of our world, and to know how to adapt when those technologies change.

"In order to be human successes we also must understand how to communicate what we know, how to collaborate, and how to distribute information.

"This is why Socrates drilled his students on memory. In pre-literate Greece, that was the essential tool.

"This is why we taught “reading” (meaning decoding ink-on-paper alphabetic texts) in school, and why we taught writing with pens and pencils, and why we introduced students to libraries. In the Gutenberg era these were the essential tools.

"I sure hope we didn’t do this to preserve our great grandfather’s skills. I hope we did it to enable our students to function in the world.

"Now, the tools of learning have changed, as have the tools of collaboration, of distribution, of creation, and if our schools do not teach these – and much more – help our students to understand how they must manipulate these tools for their purposes – and the world’s – nothing else we do in school really matters, because our students will not be able to effectively work with what they know.

"So when Troy (below) says, “Without technology an educator can be ‘successful’” I think he is wrong (I note as the spellcheck in Firefox allows me to instantly correct his misspelling “‘succecssful’” – a spellcheck which I can instantly switch between US English, British English, Australian English, Irish, and French). So is the colleague who told him, “I don’t need technology to engage my classes” – who, I bet, uses 15th to 19th Century technologies every day in her classroom (printed books, chalkboards, paper, pens, a clock, lighting, windows, chairs).

"Without the technologies which enable communication and information access, education is simply impossible. And if you choose to refuse to use the technologies your students will use – whichever antique technology you are limiting yourself to: books, carved stone tablets, hand scribed scrolls, or cave paintings, Morse Code or mail sent by sailing ship – you are abdicating your responsibility as educators."

So am I just a MacGyver tech geek? Or do I have a point...

Is learning personal or social?

There is personal, internal learning. You don't need a lot of social interaction to know, as an example, that if you stand outside and it is raining, something will change. You might even, without social interaction, learn that - depending on the season - this will feel good or not. And further, you may learn that if you are uncomfortable and you stand under a tree, you make become less uncomfortable. And I'm not here to discount any of that human learning - it is very important.

But to go beyond that - to know what rain is or to know that standing under that tree may not always be the best solution - we humans need social learning. We need to be able to share information.

And sharing information requires technology, which, as frustrating as it is to bring in an academic discussion of an old German Nazi-collaborating philosopher, brings us here...

"Heidegger found his way back to the Greeks in answering the problem of technology. The Greeks use the word techne for technology. Techne does not only refer to activities and skills of craftsman, but also for the fine arts. This is why techne as craftmaking is also techne as art. More than the idea of making and manipulating, techne is a way of bring-forth something. It is a way of letting something be known. The techne of making a statue for example is a way of bringing forth or showing the nature of the human body.

"Techne in this sense is very much related to the idea of poiesis. Poiesis is the origin of the word poetry. Poetry is an “art” of bringing forth into imagery the reality. Like the basic meaning of its etymology, poetry is a way of “revealing” something.

"Furthermore, both poiesis and techne are connected to the idea of episteme. Episteme means being at home, to understand, and be expert in something. In other words, episteme has something to do with knowledge in the broadest sense of the word. Today words taking its root from episteme, like epistemology, connote “knowledge.” Epistemology means the study of knowledge.

"These three Greek terms (techne, poiesis, episteme), although different, have the same essence; they are all processes of revealing, bringing-forth, and opening up. Thus, going back to the question of technology, what is decisive in techne or technology does not lie at all in making and manipulating, nor in using of means, but in the aforementioned revealing. Heidegger maintains: “Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.''

Technology is what allows us to socialize learning. Language (verbal and non-verbal) being, perhaps, step one. Technology also allows asynchronous social learning (step two - languages - pictorial, symbolic, and alphabetic) from the first cave paintings to Twitter. It is through technologies that the world is revealed to us, and that we reveal ourselves to the world.

Lascaux Cave Tour

So, it is a need for technology, not an unquestioning love for any specific technological set, which brings me to insist that technology is the most important set of skills we can help students learn in schools.

We all know this when we remember what "technology" is - our way of manipulating the world. And we all know this when we remember that one of the primary definers of humans is adaptive tool use.

Bonobos use tools, but they don't adapt them like humans do... (cc: Wikipedia)

Yes, plenty of other species use tools, but none adapt tools the way humans do, changing them, developing them. It is what has allowed humans to survive, and significantly, to rise from the middle to the top of the food chain.

Thus, education must be dominated by helping students to understand and adapt the tools of learning and communication. They cannot become lifelong learners without that. They cannot engage the world without that. Their "learning" - without that - becomes limited to the personal.

And we must help them learn and adapt the learning and communication tools of their time. Antique methods make nice hobbies - we still have stonecarvers and scroll artisans, people still make quill pens and papyrus (all awesome YouTube videos) - but none of that is helpful in discovering how the universe works, either mechanically or poetically. And none of that will enable them to voice their thoughts and discoveries to the world effectively.

I stand by what I said... this is not a question of MacGyver theatrics, but a question of human learning.

"Without the technologies which enable communication and information access, education is simply impossible. And if you choose to refuse to use the technologies your students will use – whichever antique technology you are limiting yourself to: books, carved stone tablets, hand scribed scrolls, or cave paintings, Morse Code or mail sent by sailing ship – you are abdicating your responsibility as educators."

- Ira Socol

[1] I had thought "ddraper" was a cute pseudonym, until I realized it was the man's name. When I coached soccer I had a player named "Steve Rambo." His jersey said "Rambo" and he took a lot of heat from opposing players... luckily, he was very good.

"Invisible Technology"?

“Technology must be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.” - Chris Lehmann

Twitter led me to a blog discussing this concept. And the quote confused me. I thought back to the opening sequence of the film 2001, A Space Odyssey, and wondered, were the tools - the technology - introduced there really supposed to be perceived by humans as oxygen is perceived? If that were true, humans would no more adapt and improve their tools than they adapt and improve their oxygen, and that seems like a very bad idea - especially a very bad idea for "education" to embrace.

Humans get taught about tools in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 (not an embed due to copyright, but a link)

I'm not picking on Chris Lehmann who I see as one of the great educators of our time - but - I have heard this “invisible technology” argument many, many times, especially since the iPad announcement (as Cory Doctorow discusses brilliantly on boingboing), and it troubles me, and baffles me.

I guess because when I argue with schools that certain technologies need not be explicitly learned "at all costs," I am typically told, by educators, how wrong I am.

So, perhaps I'm just looking for consistency of argument, or perhaps I think that we do owe our students some solid sense of how tools are constructed, how they operate, and how they are chosen.

If I walk into a school today, what I will see is this: Though we live in a time when one can very easily absorb “written” information without knowing any of the alphabetic or phonological coding embedded in text, the schools seem extremely committed to the teaching of the explicit technologies of the alphabet and phonics. Though we live in a time when simply speaking out loud can create text in many forms, schools schools seem extremely committed to the teaching of the explicit technologies of writing and keyboarding. Though we live in a time of easy to use, solar powered calculators, schools seem extremely committed to the teaching of the explicit technologies of on-paper mathematical calculation. I have even seen teachers explaining to students the proper handling of the explicit technology of books - don't tear the pages, don't leave the books out in the rain, etc.

These are all explicit technologies for utilizing certain forms of information and communication, as Chris Lehmann's student demonstrates here:

different technologies operate different ways - that is important to understand

We spend years and years of school time teaching one specific set of technologies. Reading ink-on-paper as the ancient Hebrews did, writing as scribes did thousands of years ago, keyboarding as 19th century secretaries did, cyphering just as Bob Cratchit did in Scrooge's counting house. Then, when we get to all the contemporary technologies, we suddenly want "invisibility." See an operating system or a file system? No thanks, that's too confusing. Understand why a computer or a phone does something when we tell it to? Not important, that's over our heads. Be able to change the interface, the way a computer or phone works, in order to adapt to your needs and preferences? Crazy, that's so geeky.

Let me quote Doctorow as he discusses the iPad:

"Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

"But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers)."

"The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals."

And I think Doctorow is right. I think we must offer these opportunities to understand, choose, and use tools, because that is both what makes us human and what enables progress. 

In 1880 you may not have needed to know all the details of steam locomotive technology, but it was still important for students to know the difference between a train and a trolley and renting a horse at the livery stable, and how these all operated – at least passenger interface-wise – if you needed to get somewhere. And the more you actually knew, the more choices you had in life.

important to know in 1880? maybe - but how to read a timetable, how to buy a ticket, how to behave on a train, how to be comfortable on a train - all pretty essential

"Technology" is - quite definably - not "oxygen." Technology is the art of manipulating the world. Technology is, specifically, manipulating the world for our benefit. And, as Heidegger always pointed out, the technologies we live with not only give us control, they themselves structure the way we see things - the way our world is not only perceived, but actually operates.

The gun's existence literally means that the human replaces the big cat at the top of the on-land food chain, for example, which alters not only our view of large sections of the planet but how we view night and sleep as well. The existence of the alphabet not only enables a certain form of reading, it constructs many of our organization systems. The development of numbers and numbering alters fundamental concepts of society.

So, even if I can not actually read alphabetical text, it really helps to know how it works. Even I can't subtract a 2-digit number from a 2-digit number on paper (and I typically cannot), it helps me to have an idea of how that happens. And even if you are not a computer programmer it would help if you could see the file system on the iPad, so you might grow up to be the kind of person who could design a better file system.

Thus I don't want technology to be invisible at all, especially not in schools. Right now we spend years teaching kids about the functional technologies of our past, and, whether we continue that or not, we need to teach them something about the functional technologies of their future.

Remember, "invisible" is "unknown." And "unknown" can not really be our goal in education, can it?

- Ira Socol