SECOND
IN A SERIES OF COLUMNS
THE
ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION
THE BIG CHANGE IS MAINLY
ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS, NOT TECHNOLOGY
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Evidence of "buy-in" | Cooperate, collaborate, connect |Mandate for a new vision |
By
Richard P. Richter
Evidence of
"buy-in." By now it's becoming
clear to just about everyone that information and
telecommunication technologies are driving a shift in
the content and methods of learning. It's even
becoming clear that the technologies will enable
educational institutions to restructure and
reorganize themselves in new ways. Yet, the full
long-term significance of the big change-in-progress
for education may not be quite as apparent.
To be sure, from
K-12 through graduate schools, we see abundant
evidence of "buy-in" to the technologies.
Teachers are guiding their students to Web resources
never before available. Both traditional and
experimental institutions are putting
"teleweb" courses online. Perhaps the
strongest evidence of "buy-in" to a
technological environment for learning comes from the
rising generation of students. They are beginning to
come to classes with a mindset that makes them more
comfortable with a monitor screen than a notebook or
textbook.
This hit me when
my ten-year-old granddaughter asked for help on a
vocabulary assignment. The answers were at hand in
her mother's well-used dictionary lying on the table.
But she wanted me to log her onto the Web so that the
dictionary search would produce answers in living
color on the screen. By the time she enters college,
she'll surely take e-books and an all-around
electronic environment for granted.
And if this
evidence of acceptance is not enough, look at the big
budget increases for technologies being approved by
administrators and boards. More funds each year are
shifting to the support of educational technologies.
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Evidence of "buy-in" | Cooperate, collaborate, connect |Mandate for a new vision |
Cooperate,
collaborate, and connect. While such evidence of
the big change is easy to spot, the deeper-seated
pedagogical and organizational transitions are harder
for many to see. Many educators seem satisfied simply
to ring the bells and blow the whistles, without
worrying about the less obvious significance of
change.
"Spare the
talk about a 'paradigm shift' and get this place
fully wired fast"—that's their pragmatic
approach.
But all
educators will be well advised to get a better grip
on what is really happening if they expect to have
long-term success in the "post-everything
era." Those who study what's really happening
have some counter-intuitive advice for everyone. They
advise us to stop thinking that the big change is
essentially about the information and
telecommunication technologies. Rather, we should be
thinking that the new era is essentially about the
increased power of human relationships in a
technological environment.
From this
perspective, technologies are exponentially
multiplying the impact of human cooperation in the
work place and the learning space alike. In the
emerging culture, "rugged individuals" and
vertically integrated, self-sufficient
institutions—those icons of our past--no longer
are as valued as they once were. For they are not
succeeding as they once did. The
"post-everything era" celebrates primarily
the power that comes from creating personal and
organizational relationships, close-up and worldwide,
heedless of old social and hierarchical taboos.
Cooperate, collaborate, and connect—these are
now the privileged values. And learning technologies
are giving them a new meaning in education.
The playing out
of these values is dissolving old ways of learning
and working and hastening new ways right before our
eyes. The technologies are the enablers, but human
attitudes, which translate into actions, are making
the changes happen. The result is that people who
give first priority to cooperation and collaboration
are transforming the way we define work, the way we
relate to colleagues and competitors, and the way we
organize institutions of every kind. Most important
for educators, this approach is changing the pursuit
and construction of learning itself.
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Evidence of "buy-in" | Cooperate, collaborate, connect |Mandate for a new vision |
Mandate for a new
vision. The American Productivity
& Quality Center recently observed, "In many
cases, higher education's investment in its
technological infrastructure is far ahead of its
investment in the human development necessary to
realize technology's transforming potential."
(Today's Teaching and Learning: Leveraging
Technology. Best –Practice Report. Houston,
Texas, 1999)
In other words,
the technological changes give educational leaders
and practitioners a new mandate. We must seek to
understand how the newly interconnected world
multiplies the capacity of human relationships to
broaden and deepen knowledge itself. We must figure
out how this increased capacity for human
relationships alters the old game of teaching and
learning. We must devise plans for reorganizing our
educational institutions so that they link easily to
the infrastructure of learning that is extending
itself worldwide. We must, in short, conceive a new
strategic vision, which will take the hallowed idea
of collegiality and give it fresh meaning in the
"post-everything era."
This new mandate
points us into uncharted seas, where nothing is
certain. Yet, we can take heart that the challenge is
fundamentally not about the technological revolution;
it's about human relationships. Happily for
educators, that's what it's been about since
Socrates.
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Evidence of "buy-in" | Cooperate, collaborate, connect |Mandate for a new vision |
Richard P. Richter
has been a consultant to CAPE since he became
President Emeritus of Ursinus College in 1995 after
18 years in office.
