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Latest technology is to be embraced, not feared
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A few years ago, a turn of phrase from an author called Robert Prensky opened up a debate about the use of technology by today’s teenagers and children. He drew a sharp divide between those people who have seen the gradual introduction of ever more sophisticated, and often confusing, technology and those — like the students in our schools today — who were born into this world and grew up surrounded by a multitude of tools to communicate.
The terms “digital native” and “digital immigrant” are designed to resonate with our ideas, familiar in the international cauldron of Shanghai, of native language speakers and those who have worked as adults to achieve proficiency. They have caused controversy — some people don’t like the use of the term “immigrant” — and they have provoked criticism that they emphasize a sharp divide that isn’t so clear in reality. Prensky has now taken to talking about Digital Wisdom to avoid his message being lost in a debate about semantics.
The message, though, is something every teacher, parent and school leader should take to heart. Our students and children will not succeed in the brave new world that, with apologies to Shakespeare, has such technology in it, without developing their use of modern tools and processes in their quotidian life. I’m typing these reflections on a laptop as I happen to be sitting on a train with a table to rest on.
I’d have used my iPad if the train had been fuller and I had to choose a different seat. I might have chosen to dictate to my phone under slightly different circumstances, and I might also have sketched a few ideas in a notebook with a pen. We — the digital immigrants — expect to operate in a world of technological choices, choosing what works best for the task at hand.
So what part should the school play? We need to make sure that students in schools have the same opportunities to learn to make these choices, or they will be operating at a considerable disadvantage at school and in the coming years. The teenage years are the key formative period for the human brain. Practices learned here are embedded for life. Schools need to create the space for young people to learn to use technology as an extension of themselves, and that means that teachers have to be comfortable with students bringing and using technology to augment and redefine the tasks set.
Any secondary age student needs access to their own devices — phone, tablet, laptop — and the school needs to provide a deep and rich infrastructure to enable them to work smoothly. Reliable and fast Internet access, social media services for communication and sharing work, printing, interfaces to scientific instruments, music technology — these are the investments schools must make to ensure that today’s students can learn in a style that prepares them for the augmented lives they will lead as adults.
We can (and should) provide filtering systems to limit easy access to undesirable information, but such systems are flawed as the real answers lie with educating, guiding and trust.
We need not to be worried about students using technology, particularly when we wouldn’t use it that way ourselves. We need to enable, not dictate, we need to advise and steer, and we need to get out of the way. The ultimate goal of teaching is to guide young people so they will become better adults than we are. Our biggest risk is holding them back because their world is not our world.
(Stuart White is vice principle of The British International School Shanghai, Puxi.)
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