Begging for Technology

Yesterday I sent an email out to all staff in my school district detailing the new email system that the Kentucky Department of Education will be providing to all school districts beginning sometime in July. The new email system is really quite impressive, and it's more than an email system. It's going to include

• Email (of course)


• Online storage space, which the individual user can partition and keep parts private, share other parts with specific people, and share other parts with everyone


• Blogging capabilities


• Instant Messaging


• Desktop Sharing (meaning you can allow others to see YOUR computer on their desktop)


• A Social Networking Component (Think MySpace but for the school only.)

It's really a dramatic difference over what we have now: an email system that also has a calendar and a contact list. It was such a difference that I concluded the email by writing, "I hope this gives a taste of what's coming for those teachers who have been begging for something like this!"

And my use of the word "begging" made me remember a moment in the early days of my educational career...

(If this were a TV show, this is the moment when the shimmering sound would play and the screen would have all of these wavy lines appear to simulate that we were going back in time. Maybe there would be some music playing in the background, something like R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon"...)

It was 1993, and I was sitting in on a facilities plan meeting at my high school. We were discussing what kind of changes needed to be made at the school, and as I recall I was sitting directly across from the building principal. And I don't remember what precipitated my comment, but I remember what I was saying to him, in tones so insistent that he was staring at me wide eyed (which I think is why I remember this so clearly). I was leaning across the table, forcefully saying, "I'm begging you! We HAVE to have an open computer lab! It would benefit our students SO much! I know we don't have a lot of space, but you can take my classroom if you have to! I'll give it up and become a traveling teacher! I'll help run a fund raiser to buy the computers! But we HAVE to do this!"

We DID have a computer lab in the building at the time. In fact, we had two, but one was used all day long by the business department to teach computer application skills, and the other was used all day long by the math department to teacher computer programming. But I had to argue, really argue if I recall, and badger and complain so that the administration would finally break down and get a third computer lab that anyone could sign up and use. I was one of only four teachers in the entire building who had a computer on their desk, and mine was MY OWN computer, not a district computer. I think the administration thought I was some kind of whacko.

"Why would we need an open lab?" the principal asked me. "Who would use it?"

"I would!" I said. "Think about it! My students could write essays using a word processor, and then they could SAVE them on a floppy drive. I could evaluate them and give them back and then they could go back to the lab and actually make the changes I suggested. Think how productive it would be for the students to actually MAKE the changes I suggested!"

"Why couldn't they just re-write the essay on paper?" he asked.

"They could," I said, "but would they re-write it a third time? A fourth? We could REALLY give students a glimpse into the whole writing process, including revision!

"But you won't use the lab every day," he said. "Who else will use it? Will it just sit empty the rest of the time? I can't see any of the other English teachers in this building using a 'word processor' with their students."

"You'll be surprised," I promised him. "I think they'll all start using it eventually. And math teachers could take their classes in to do spreadsheets and graphs. Social Studies classes could write essays, too. They make programs now where you can actually DRAW on a computer. Art classes could go in. Plus, there's software for education that could be purchased!" The idea of the Internet never occurred to me. I'm not even sure I'd heard of it in 1993.

He was skeptical, and I could see it in his eyes, but I recall him saying rather noncommittally, "Well, we'll see what we can do..."

(More shimmering sounds and squiggly lines as we come back to the present...)

The idea now that there would be resistance to a computer lab for students is laughable, but it's just another testament to how for we've come in regards to technology. It really has embedded itself into our lives in general and education specifically. Today, at that same high school, there are FOUR open computer labs, and every teacher in the building has at least one computer in his/her classroom, and most have three or four more AND some sort of projection device so that students can see what's on the teacher computer. Several of the teachers in the building have student response systems, little clickers like the audience members on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or America's Funniest Home Videos have that allow them to instantly vote. Teachers use these devices to get instant feedback on how well students understand material. In 1993 there were fewer than 100 computers in the entire school district. As of today there are exactly 1,121. Computers and technology are a common part of education now, and more teaching could be accomplished in a classroom without a chalk board than one without a computer.

And now teachers are begging for more. For more collaboration tools. For ways to communicate instantly with their students in all sorts of ways. And I find myself on the other side of that desk now, wondering who will use some of this stuff that teachers have been begging me for. But because I was on the teacher side of the desk back in 1993 and I remember that, I fervently believe that there are teachers out there who WILL.

And all of this just makes me wonder...what technology will teachers be begging for in another 15 years?