2006 DEC/JAN EDUTOPIA 43

B Y M A R C P R E N S K Y

The biggest question about technology and schools in the twenty-first century is not so much “What can it do?” but, rather,“When will it get to do it?” We all know life will be much different by 2100. Will school? How close will we be to Edutopia?First, it helps to look at the typical process of technology adoption (keeping in mind, of course, that schools are not typicalof anything.) It’s typically a four-step process:

1. Dabbling.2. Doing old things in old ways.3. Doing old things in new ways.4. Doing new things in new ways.Until recently, we have mostly been dabbling with technology in our schools: A few Apples here. A PC there. Random cre-

ation of software by teachers and other individuals—some very good, much bad. A few edutainment disks. Dabbling.

Old Things in Old Ways When a new technology appears, our first instinct is always to continue doing things within the technology the way we’vealways done it. People still illuminated the first printed Gutenberg Bibles by hand. Television pioneers set up single camerasin “great” theater seats. The result was pretty much like what came before; some elements may have been lost, but theresults were certainly cheaper, and far more efficient.

That is almost exclusively what we now do with educational technology. We use it mostly to pass documents around, butnow in electronic form, and the result is not very different from what we have always known.

People certainly are putting courses, curricula, and lesson plans online. This trend is important, but it’s hardly new—it willbe new only when those courses, curricula, and lesson plans are very different and technology influenced, when they are setup so they can be found and mixed and matched easily, when they are continually iterated and updated, and when the kidshave a big say in their creation. Certainly, systems for maintaining records and assessment online, such as PowerSchool, aWeb-based student-information system from Apple (and similar products from Pearson School Systems and ChancerySoftware), have emerged, but the records and assessments we ask for and keep, for the most part, haven’t changed.

I would even include writing, creating, submitting, and sharing work digitally on the computer via email or instant messag-ing in the category of doing old things (communicating and exchanging) in old ways (passing stuff around.) Is there education-al progress, though? It appears that students who write on a computer turn in longer and higher-quality assignments than thosewho compose by hand, even though it’s still writing. A middle school principal in Maine (where all middle schoolers are supplied

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y B I L L D U K E

In each issue, Edutopia publishes an essay focusing on one of ten ideas for improving our schools (www.edutopia.org/bigideas). The fourth in the series, this one focuses

on an aspect of our seventh Big Idea, Adopt: Technology.

Email your thoughts to bigideas@edutopia.org.

ADOPTAND

ADAPT21st-Century Schools Need

21st-Century Technology

BigIdeas

44 EDUTOPIA DEC/JAN 2006

with computers) proclaims that the debateover handwriting is finally over—all assign-ments must be keyboarded.You can mournthe passing of handwriting if you must; thekids certainly won’t. If they are writing bet-ter and more detailed papers, yes, there hasbeen progress.

But new technology still faces a greatdeal of resistance. Today, even in manyschools with computers,Luddite administra-tors (and even Luddite technology adminis-trators) lock down the machines, refusing toallow students to access email. Many alsoblock instant messaging, cell phones, cellphone cameras, unfiltered Internet access,Wikipedia, and other potentially highlyeffective educational tools and technologies,to our kids’ tremendous frustration. Evenwhere technology has not been blocked,much of the digitized educational materialsand records are just examples of using com-puters to collect old stuff (such as data orlesson plans) in old ways (by filing).There aresome educational benefits, though, includ-ing allowing teachers to access data moreeasily and parents to do so more extensively.

Old Things in New WaysRecently, a number of our schools (a verysmall number) have entered the stage ofdoing other old things in new ways. Now, itbegins to get a little more interesting.

“I used to have to tell my students aboutphenomena, or have them read; now I canshow them,” says Jim Doane, a scienceteacher at Scarborough Middle School, inScarborough, Maine.When we begin addingdigital demonstrations through video andFlash animation,we are giving students new,better ways to get information.

In a growing number of simulations,ranging from the off-the-shelf SimCity andCivilization III to Muzzy Lane’s MakingHistory to MIT’s experimental Revolutionand Supercharged, students—even elemen-tary school children—can now manipulatewhole virtual systems, from cities to coun-tries to refineries, rather than just handlingmanipulatives.

In Education Simulations’ Real Lives,

children take on the persona of a peasantfarmer in Bangladesh, a Brazilian factoryworker, a police officer in Nigeria, a Polishcomputer operator,or a lawyer in the UnitedStates, among others, experiencing thoselives based on real-world statistical data.Riverdeep’s School Tycoon enables kids tobuild a school to their liking. With thesetools, students act like scientists and innova-tors, rather than serve as empty vessels.Theyarrive at their own conclusions throughcontrolled experimentation and what scien-tists call “enlightened trial and error.”

Still, our best teachers have always usedinteractive models for demonstrations, andstudents, like scientists and military plan-ners, have been conducting simulations insand, on paper, and in their heads for thou-sands of years. So, though some observerstrumpet these uses of technology as greatinnovations, they are really still examples ofdoing old things in new ways.

But there are many more old things chil-dren are doing in new ways—innovationsthey have invented or adopted as their pre-ferred method of behavior—that have notyet made their way into our schools.Theseinclude buying school materials (clothes,supplies, and even homework) on eBay andthe Internet;exchanging music on P2P sites;building games with modding (modifying)tools; setting up meetings and dates online;posting personal information and creationsfor others to check out; meeting peoplethrough cell phones; building libraries ofmusic and movies; working together in self-formed teams in multiplayer online role-playing games; creating and using onlinereputation systems; peer rating of com-ments; online gaming; screen saver analysis;photoblogging; programming; exploring;and even transgressing and testing socialnorms.

An important question is, how many ofthese new ways will ever be integrated intoour instruction—or even understood by edu-cators! If we want to move the useful adop-tion of technology forward, it is crucial foreducators to learn to listen,to observe,to ask,and to try all the new methods their students

have already figured out,and do so regularly.Two big factors stand in the way of our

making more and faster progress in technol-ogy adoption in our schools. One of these istechnological, the other social.

The Big Tech Barrier: One-to-OneThe missing technological element is trueone-to-one computing, in which each stu-dent has a device he or she can work on,keep, customize, and take home. For truetechnological advance to occur, the com-puters must be personal to each learner.When used properly and well for education,these computers become extensions of thestudents’ personal self and brain.They musthave each student’s stuff and each student’sstyle all over them (in case you haven’tnoticed, kids love to customize and maketechnology personal), and that is somethingsharing just doesn’t allow. Any ratio thatinvolves sharing computers—even two kidsto a computer—will delay the technologyrevolution from happening.

Many groups are working on solutions tothe one-to-one problem, and this approachis being implemented in several places,including Maine; Vail, Arizona; Florida’sBroward County Schools; and the LemonGrove School District, in Lemon Grove,California.Those who cite cost as a barrierto implementing one-to-one computingshould know that the prices of thesedevices, as with all technology, are fallingdramatically. Although the expense is oftenestimated at $500 to $1,000 per unit, thisyear,according to longtime computer vision-ary Nicholas Negroponte, we will see abasic, laptop computer for roughly $100.

The Social Barrier: Digital ImmigrantsA second key barrier to technological adop-tion is more challenging. Schools (whichreally means the teachers and administra-tors) famously resist change. Though someobservers, including multiple-intelligencesguru Howard Gardner, point to schools asthe “conservators” of our culture, and there-fore instinctively conservative in what theydo, the resistance comes more from the fact

Even in many schools with computers, Luddite administrators lock down the machines, refusing to allow students to access email.

2006 DEC/JAN EDUTOPIA 45

that our public school system has evolvedan extremely delicate balance betweenmany sets of pressures—political, parental,social, organizational, supervisory, and finan-cial—that any technological change isbound to disrupt. For example, such shiftingcertainly initially means more work andpressure on educators, who already feeloverburdened.

In the past, the pressure against disrup-tion has always been stronger than the pres-sure for change. So, as new technologies—from radio to television, from telephonesto cell phones, from cameras to video cams,or even Wikipedia—have come down thepike,American public schools have fearfullystood ready to exclude them. Change hasn’thappened.

But resisting today’s digital technologywill be truly lethal to our children’s edu-cation.They live in an incredibly fast-mov-ing world significantly different than theone we grew up in. The number-one tech-nology request of today’s students is tohave email and instant messaging alwaysavailable and part of school.They not onlyneed things faster than their teachers areused to providing them, they also havemany other new learning needs as well,such as random access to information andmultiple data streams.

These “digital natives” are born intodigital technology.Conversely, their teachers(and all older adults) are “digital immi-grants.” Having learned about digital tech-nology later in life, digital immigrantsretain their predigital “accents”—such asthinking that virtual relationships (thosethat exist only online) are somehow lessreal or important than face-to-face ones.Such outmoded perspectives are seriousbarriers to our students’ twenty-first-centuryprogress.

Many schools still ban new digital tech-nologies, such as cell phones and Wikipedia.Even when schools do try to move forward,they often face antitechnology pressurefrom parents demanding that schools go“back to basics.” Many teachers, under pres-sure from all sides, are often so afraid toexperiment and to trust their kids with tech-nology that they demand extensive “train-ing” before they will try anything new. Allthese factors impede even the many schoolstrying to change.

New Problems, New SolutionsWith very few exceptions, our schools havenot been physically designed for computers.Much time in our schools’ forty-five-minuteinstructional periods is often wasted in com-puter setup and shutdown. Teachers areoften unsure about how to integrate tech-nology in their lesson plans and, often,administrators have little, if any, guidance togive them. In many places where technolo-gy could liberate teachers most, such asautomatic grading of homework and tests,automation has been neglected.Adding digi-tal technology is generally disruptive towhat schools and teachers do, and the pres-sure of high-stakes testing only exacerbatesthis problem.

How, then, do we move forward?First, consult the students. They are far

ahead of their educators in terms of takingadvantage of digital technology and using itto their advantage. We cannot, no matterhow hard we try or how smart we are (orthink we are), invent the future education ofour children for them.The only way to moveforward effectively is to combine what theyknow about technology with what weknow and require about education. Sadly, inmost cases, no one asks for their opinion. Igo to conference after conference on schooltechnology, and nary a student is in sight. Ido hope that, after having pointed this situa-tion out a hundred times or so, I will findthat it is starting to change. Students willhave to help,and we will have to think hard-er about how to make this happen.

New Things in New WaysFor the digital age, we need new curricula,new organization, new architecture, newteaching, new student assessments, newparental connections, new administrationprocedures, and many other elements. Somepeople suggest using emerging models frombusiness—but these, for the most part,don’tapply. Others suggest trying to changeschool size—but this will not help much ifwe are still doing the wrong things, only insmaller spaces.

What we’re talking about is invention—new things in new ways.Change is the orderof the day in our kids’ twenty-first-centurylives. It ought to be the order of the day intheir schools as well. Not only would stu-dents welcome it, they will soon demand it.

Angus King, the former governor of Mainewho pushed for one-to-one computing inthat state’s schools, recently suggested ourkids “should sue us” for better education. Isuggest that every lesson plan, every class,every school, every school district, andevery state ought to try something new andthen report to all of us what works and whatdoesn’t; after all, we do have the Internet.

Some people will no doubt worry that,with all this experimentation, our children’seducation will be hurt.“When will we havetime for the curriculum,”they will ask,“andfor all the standardized testing being man-dated?” If we really offered our childrensome great future-oriented content (suchas, for example, that they could learnabout nanotechnology, bioethics, geneticmedicine, and neuroscience in neat inter-active ways from real experts), and theycould develop their skills in programming,knowledge filtering, using their connectiv-ity, and maximizing their hardware, and thatthey could do so with cutting-edge, power-ful, miniaturized, customizable, and one-to-one technology, I bet they would com-plete the “standard” curriculum in half thetime it now takes, with high test scores allaround. To get everyone to the good stuff,the faster kids would work with and pull upthe ones who were behind.

In other words, if we truly offer ourkids an Edutopia worth having, I believeour students will work as hard as they canto get there.

So, let’s not just adopt technology intoour schools. Let’s adapt it, push it, pull it,iterate with it, experiment with it, test it,and redo it, until we reach the point where

we and our kidstruly feel we’vedone our verybest. Then, let’spush it and pull itsome more. Andlet’s do it quickly,so the twenty-sec-

ond century doesn’t catch us by surprisewith too much of our work undone.

A big effort? Absolutely. But our kidsdeserve no less.d

Marc Prensky (marc@games2train.com), founder andCEO of Games2train, is a speaker, writer, consultant,and game designer. He is the author of Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill, 2001) and the upcomingDon’t Bother Me, Mom, I’m Learning (Paragon, 2005).

Get StartedWant to get more involvedin one-to-one computing?Check out Project Inkwell:

www.projectinkwell.comWikipedia is an organicencyclopedia—one written by its readers:www.wikipedia.org