Blog Juice for Educational Technology

When I woke up this morning, I had no idea I had this much writing in me.

I finally watched last week’s debate at NYSCATE between Gary Stager and Will Richardson. I was not surprised to hear my name invoked, though it was startling to hear it as an impetus of that event — a challenge that Gary made months ago in his blog to debate me or any of the other Web 2.0pian evangelists out there. He claimed during the exchange, that we keynoters arrive from the airport, suddenly appear behind the pulpit, have our say, and disappear again. That’s rubbish! But it’s not the point of this writing.

I was not surprised to see that there wasn’t any thing that Will and Gary seemed to disagree about in any substantial way. There wasn’t anything said by either that I’d disagree with in any substantial way. I could certainly pick out minute elements of what both of them said and make a case for its wrongness from some perspective, but I just don’t see the benefit.  They were both eloquent and inspiring.

I think that most of us pretty much see education through the same glasses, and agree that students and teachers should be using contemporary technologies as tools of the trade. Gary likes using computers to help students learn to work ideas with logic and math (programming), and Will concentrates on using technology to work ideas with language (blogging). This is a rough interpretation of how the moderator (could not understand his name) characterized them. You can read a great review of the discussion in Gary’s latest entry (Will Richardson & Gary Stager – Live: The Bootleg Video) in The Pulse, and see the video here (recorded with a $100 digital camera by our friend, Dave Jakes).

What I was reminded of, while watching Will and Gary, was a debate that I saw many years ago at a CoSN conference in Washington.  I was at the conference working a booth for ThinkQuest, but somehow got invited in to attend the banquet and see a debate between then Technology & Learning editor in chief, Judy Salpeter, and Todd Opeheimer, author of a recent (1997) controversial piece in The Atlantic Monthly, The Computer Delusion.

Both debaters brilliantly hit their targets.  Neither came even close to hitting each other.  It was unsettling to me.  Then I realized early the next morning that they were each speaking from visions of education that were as different from each other as night and day, missing each other completely. 

Oppenheimer spoke from an education system that assumed a static world — where the job of education is to teach the child.  I like to refer to it as teaching children to be taught.  His perspective reasons that the same teaching tools and techniques that served children in the industrial age, will serve them just as will in an info-conceptual age (or whatever you want to call it).

Salpeter, on the other hand, spoke from a world of rapid change and a dramatic shift in the world of information, where teaching children to teach themselves and the literacies to accomplish this should be our goal.

I’m not sure why this little piece of history came to mind.  But today begins my state’s educational technology conference (NCETC), and I’ll be here for four days.  I know that I’ll be having lots of conversations, and I suspect that much of it will be about the roll of education right now.

Smith, Brian. “Will Richardson - Stager/Richardson Keynote.” BrianCSmith’s Photostream. 20 Nov 2007. 26 Nov 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/bcsmith/2052001611/>.

Smith, Brian. “Will Richardson - Stager/Richardson Keynote.” BrianCSmith’s Photostream. 20 Nov 2007. 26 Nov 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/bcsmith/2052001723/>.