• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

A teacher’s view of teacher surveys about youth & tech

November 14, 2012 By Anne Leave a Comment

Monday’s post was about two surveys of US teachers about what technology’s doing to students’ academic performance. Today, a guest commentary from Marianne Malmstrom, who teaches grades 3-8 at the Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, N.J., after I asked her what she thought of the research and the New York Times’s coverage:

“At least the New York Times and Pew stated several times the findings were subjective!…

“Of course the kids can’t focus! They live in a world of fast cars, and school asks them to travel via horse and buggy!” Referring to high school teacher Hope Molina Porter’s comment to the Times that she was now an “entertainer,” Marianne wrote, “Good teachers can ‘jump around the room’ and ‘entertain’ kids by decorating the buggies with streamers & sporty flame decals, but all the shine in the world won’t bring an outmoded means of transportation up to speed.”

Continuing the metaphor, she wrote, “Even if some schools are progressive enough to let kids bring their own cars to school, they insist that kids drive no faster (or farther) than the pace of the buggy. It is, after all, a tried and true means of getting from point A to point B. Besides, something bad might happen in those dangerous fast cars.”

Like me, Marianne questioned the value of surveying people who generally haven’t used technology in teaching. It’s like seeking a dispassionate view from those with a bias. “Can anyone truly understand without experience? If one does not understand, can one truly evaluate? That’s what I’m reading in these studies. They are not evaluating the whole picture. They are making sweeping assumptions based on measurements taken with outdated tools (and perceptions).” Referring to teachers in general, she continued, “We have a ‘horse and buggy’ mentality and are dismayed that our kids are zipping past us with unfamiliar technology. We are unable to comprehend their agility in driving that technology. And we have no clue where they are going because we refuse to get out of the buggy and take the ride with them. We continue to misinterpret the situation because we won’t budge. We sit in our buggies with an air of authority, clutching the reins with a white knuckled grip. Frozen in fear, we yell after our kids as they speed by, ‘We are your elders, we know what’s best for you! Come back here!’

“It’s a ridiculous metaphor, but it’s the best way I can think of to describe the disconnect. As life screeched to a stand still on the East Coast [last] week [with Hurricane Sandy], it has given us pause to reflect on how much we rely on electricity, phones, Internet and gas. None of us wants to go backwards, and yet that’s what we expect of kids.

“One of the positive effects of the storm has been spending more time getting to know and help our friends and neighbors. It can be easy to get caught up in our fast-paced world and forget to carve out time to attend to our face-to-face relationships, or just take time to just get quiet. But then it was probably hard to do the same when we were working to survive off the land.

“I agree whole-heartedly that we all need balance in life. Kids sometimes need adults to help them set healthy limits. The question is, how can we do that if we are so disconnected and don’t understand their world? The head of Common Sense Media [quoted in the Times] talked with total certainty that what the kids are doing online falls entirely in the category of ‘entertainment’…. What kids are doing online is far more sophisticated than entertainment. What I have experienced and observed first-hand, working with students in virtual spaces, is that they are learning in much more complex ways than we imagine. They are connecting, playing, creating, collaborating, learning and teaching each other. We do our children and students a disservice to dismiss that…. It’s our kids who are adapting to our changing world as so brilliantly illustrated in the story of the Ethiopian six-year-olds and the box of Android tablets [see this]. Kids are wonderfully capable of learning by themselves. What will we do with that information? How will we adapt and redesign learning spaces that are relevant for children in this century? In this decade? Now? This could truly be a new renaissance if we are willing to step out of the ‘dark age’ of industrialized, standardized, consumption-driven education.

“Kids need the wisdom of adults, but we can’t force them to stay behind in our horse-driven carriage in order to get it. Until we are able to swallow our fear and get into the car with them, they will be out their navigating the world without the benefit of our wisdom. Will we join them? Who knows, they may be even be willing to teach us how to drive the car ourselves!”

Share Button

Filed Under: education technology, Research, School & Tech Tagged With: education reform, educational technology, innovation, research, school policy, school tech, teachers, youth

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Friend me on
Facebook
Follow me on
Twitter
See me on
YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms
  • Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes
  • Global network of Net safety regulators: Let’s think on this
  • Dot-com bust, 2022-style
  • BeReal & being real about safety & privacy
  • How this new app might well be safer…
  • Why partner with teens on tech: Great new book

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.