Deviced! and How the Internet Happened

 DEVICED! is written by Doreen Dodgen-Magee who does an excellent job of discussing “Balancing Life and Technology in a Digital World.”  Dodgen-Magee is a psychologist with over twenty-five years of experience and although she is definitely not anti-technology, she does encourage reflection on reducing our dependence and interaction with devices. Dodgen-Magee strongly discourages binary thinking (i.e., tech is all good or all bad) and notes that “The digital world, when explored in its complexity, opens a door for us to experience and learn more about the world of ideas, people and ultimately, ourselves.” In Part 1 she cites numerous studies and discusses “How Devices Are Impacting Us.” Subsequent sections of DEVICED! deal with establishing a “Grounded Self” and “Finding a New Balance.” I especially liked the activities which she suggests such as the “Ten (RICH) Minutes a Day” exercise because they are simple and do-able.  I was fortunate to receive an advance reader copy of this text in digital form and am looking forward to spending more time with the print version so as to better interact with the Appendix which includes additional questions for exploration (e.g., How might I create and celebrate opportunities for boredom?), the Technology Pyramid Worksheet, and an extensive list of other recommended activities (including board games grouped by readers’ interest in the arts, logic, etc.) and resources; a bibliography and index are also provided. For example, I am curious to read more about how she suggests grouping technologies that connect, educate, entertain or hurt – I wonder if our students would agree with those categorizations? DEVICED! is a great starting point for observation and assessment as we continue our district-wide strategic planning, particularly with respect to emotional well-being and technology evaluation.   

If you are at all interested in the history of the internet, be sure to have a look at HOW THE INTERNET HAPPENED by Brian McCullough, host of the Internet History Podcast.  He subtitles his text “From Netscape to the iPhone” and details events (e.g., dot.com bubble) that occurred between the late 1990s and 2008. In his entertaining and informative recap, McCullough provides plenty of background on key players and influencers (e.g., Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) and companies (e.g., Yahoo, AOL, Amazon), many of whom will be familiar names for most readers. Also, he tends to divide his chapters into discussions of evolving services (e.g., eBay, iTunes) in response to changing consumer expectations (trust in others, mixing music). Hopefully, McCullough will pick up the story again after the birth of the iPhone and the rising popularity of blogs in 2008 as another decade of innovation is waiting to be chronicled.

HOW THE INTERNET HAPPENED received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Library Journal and I believe it will appeal particularly to readers who can recall the early internet days and marvel over the progress from dial-up connections to high speed wireless.  

Update: Contrast this with the Dec. 26th New York Magazine article on “How Much of the Internet is Fake” where Max Read contends “What’s gone from the internet, after all, isn’t “truth,” but trust: the sense that the people and things we encounter are what they represent themselves to be.”

Rewiring Education by John Couch and Jason Towne

REWIRING EDUCATION is a new offering written by John Couch, Apple’s first Vice President of Education and proponent of personalized learning, and by Jason Towne, a research fellow at Harvard University where he focuses on motivation, learning, and technology.  The subtitle is “How Technology Can Unlock Every Student’s Potential.”  And while I found the familiar conversational tone to be appealing, I was a bit puzzled by the purpose of this book. One question I have: Is this about what they advocate all schools should do OR about what has been tried and needs to be “rewired”?  That’s because, frankly, we place a great deal of emphasis on project-based and personalized student learning, but struggle at times to see the added value of technology, especially when it does not work as it should.  Even though these authors did not fully address specific concerns about infrastructure and device roll-outs, they did note persistent difficulties with getting promising technology to scale. In addition, Couch and Towne seem to be advocating “hands-on” tech like maker spaces and 3D printing which is great and very appropriate for younger students, but the authors seemed less clear on what higher education is doing to leverage tech potential.  And that, in turn, begs the question: How should high schools effectively bridge those practices for students? 

Couch and Towne do devote a section of the book to describing models such as TCPK (Technology, Content, Pedagogy, and Knowledge) and SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and redefinition) which we have been discussing for years, too. They say, “Technology can be an enormous benefit to learning and creativity if it’s used as prescribed as a means to engage and motivate.” We have tried multiple options, but find the time devoted to manipulating the tech often overshadows the work on content. As a colleague recently asked me (when discussing this book) “Where are the collaborative spaces online that students can use easily for creative projects?” Even when final projects look professional, what did students actually learn?   

The Economist also covers this topic and featured it on its July 2017 cover and in these articles "Brain Games" and "Machine Learning." That highlighted three imperatives: "personalized learning" must follow evidence on how children learn; make sure that ed tech narrows inequalities in education; and its potential will only be realized if teachers embrace it. Experts and educators like Marc Prensky, Simon Sinek and Sal Khan all contributed positive reviews for REWIRING EDUCATION, and Couch and Towne extol the virtues of mobile technology, but I also ask what consideration is being given to unintended consequences of too much screen time such as those documented by Jean Twenge? Recently, both NPR and The Chicago Tribune profiled how over 600 schools have worked with Yondr to combat addiction to phones during school. That is counter to the argument made by Couch and Towne that school has not caught up to the digital world. Overall, REWIRING EDUCATION feels well-intentioned, but not as focused on practical issues as it could be. For more on this topic, see Steve Hargadon's October 2017 summary, "Modern Learning: Re-Discovering the Transformative Promise of Educational Technology."