More thoughts on Gary’s blog

It may seem that I’m beating a topic to death, but the more I think about it, the more Gary’s blog can have the effect of dampening the adoption of a major revolution in the world of educational technologies.  For example, when he brings up the issue of affordability, Gary is probably wearing his Apple hat and thinking that some kids won’t be able to afford a $300 (or $100) phone.  This is true, but can kids afford to get the iPhone 3GS?  Since the price has dropped to zero, my guess is they have the budget for that.  If one buys into the argument that the 3GS is an outdated phone (interesting since I’m still using mine and will likely do so for some time to come), then just look at the Android phones where much better capabilities are also available for free.

Of course there are the monthly charges, but there are also different plans from different vendors.  If the bulk of student work is going to be done using WiFi, then a minimum plan should do the trick, especially since 3G data service is so pitiful (and Apple refuses to adopt 4G capabilities.)

Taking the long view, I’d rather put my energy into getting e-rate plans approved for student personal accounts to help offset some of the cost.

The real issue has to do with how these devices are used, not whether they are a good idea.  Yes, it is far too easy to use them for information search and retrieval, or reading e-books.  But what about using them as tools students can program themselves?  I’m involved (informally) with the AppInventor project started at Google and now at MIT’s Medialab.  This programming language makes it easy for kids to not only build their own cool apps, but to share them with the world.  Just yesterday I wrote an action-based simple videogame – it took about an hour to create and debug.  Believe me, kids could do it faster!

So what is the real issue here?  Students are bringing in their own devices with the expectation they will be allowed to use them.  This knocks full-frontal teaching for a loop.  The time we spend arguing the inevitable would be far better spent helping teachers learn to use these tools in ways that support student creativity.

And with this, I promise to move on to other topics!

A response to Gary Stager

Those of you who don’t know Gary need to learn more about him.  He is one of the more articulate thinkers about technology and children of our time, and he shares his insights through a variety of means, including his own blog, Stager to Go.  In a recent post (http://stager.tv/blog/?p=2397&cpage=1#comment-56660) Gary says that “BYOD” is the worst idea of the 21st century.  His concerns are many, including the observation that the adoption of student-owned technologies absolves schools of the responsibility to provide powerful computing tools for all children, thus perpetuating the digital divide.  He also correctly states that a cell phone is not a personal computer, and that these tools make it easy to think of education as an information-gathering enterprise, not something that cultivates creativity and thinking.

What he leaves out is the fact that this is rapidly changing.  Powerful tablets running Android 3 provide access to many wonderful activities, and (as I mention below) students will soon be able to create their own programs for these devices using a Logo-like language (Scratch morphed into AppInventor).  Ever since Apple banned the MIT Medialab’s Scratch language from the iPad, Mitch Resnick and his band of followers have redoubled their efforts to bring this powerful language to what is destined to become the dominant platform. (Over a half-million Android devices are set up for the first time every day of the week.)

So, Gary got part of it right, but I respectfully suggest that the situation he describes is not nearly so dire as my response (below) to his blog suggests.

Gary,
As always, you stimulate thought. The fact is that schools don’t WANT one to one computing. As you correctly state, this would be amazingly cheap to do. One to one was fought because it is a real game changer. Now to the point. The reason BYOD is interesting is because it is a consumer-driven revolution – children are bringing their own tools to class with every expectation they will be allowed to use them. Schools are clamoring to set up the right backbone to handle traffic from myriad devices. While you are right to say that a phone is not a computer, that vision is blurring. The rise of powerful, inexpensive tablets will have quite an impact. Maybe you never heard of anyone going into Best Buy to purchase a “device,” but I’ve never heard a kid ask for a new “clicker”. What passes for technology adoption in many schools is a sad attempt to co-opt the revolution.

Like you, I believe children should use their tools as tools for creativity and deep understanding. This is why I’m so actively supporting the Scratch and AppInventor projects at MIT, especially now that they are merging. While you are correct to point out that some devices (like the iPad, for example) do a horrid job of supporting kids creative expression through programming, this is an Apple issue, not a platform problem. Android devices are far more flexible, and the release of Scratch on that platform later this year will bear that out.

If there is a downside to BYOD, it is simply that the establishement of education actively fought student technology until the kids brought it into their own hands. As Papert said, “Unless schools change, the students will create a revolution” The revolution is at hand.