New Must-Have Component Needed in Digital Literacy Approaches: Instruction in Screen Addiction Engineering

There should be a new component in all digital literacy efforts:

Students should be educated on the engineered addiction aspects of these devices and technologies and what they can do take away Tech's entrapment power.

They should receive training, for example, on how features such as the "Like" button were utilized to lure them to these applications and keep them there. By recognizing the manipulating factors of this feature, they can de-elevate its importance and free themselves from its tyranny.

They should be receive specific instruction about how these devices can be exploit them and manipulate them.

They should also receive instruction in how to counter this built-in addiction feature and free themselves from the lure of screens. For example, they could receive instruction on "the notification" and how it is a siren's call to return to the screen. They could learn to limit or turn off all notifications at all times or during specific periods of the day. This would eliminate one major, addictive aspect of the screen and give them control over the device.

Ed Tech should transform digital literacy from being an effort to sanitize Silicon Valley devices and transform students into "good little consumers" of these, into being empowered and critical human beings who decide for themselves when and how these intersect their lives.

This would transform the field of Ed Tech from being a cheerleader for Big Tech, into actually giving children and their parents power of these devices. 

Sadly, Ed Tech still sees its primary role as delivering new consumers to these companies.

AI Is Not Inevitable No Matter What Ed Tech Tells You

Ed Tech’s argument to educators about AI continues with the inevitability argument, a genius marketing tactic of Big Tech.

“AI is here to stay so you might as well accept it and subject students to it, after all, they are going to use it anyway,” says post after post from the Ed Tech faithful.

That’s such a poor argument on so many levels.

First of all, the here-to-stay, inevitability argument… This is Silicon Valley dogma and marketing at its best. No technology is “inevitable” but think about it. If the Tech companies get users to acquiesce without protest, they’ve won from the start! 

Sorry EdTech, we do not have to accept AI as is. We can, through our government, push for regulation and through our consumer choices, we can refuse to use their products if they are not up to our standards. Consumers always have a choice. Accepting inevitability means surrending power.

Secondly, the students-are-going-to-use-it-anyway argument… Does it really matter? Students often choose to use any number of products, and it is not education’s role to teach the proper use of these products. It is not educators’ responsibility to sanitize AI so that it is used properly either. If one follows that argument, we should be requiring gun safety for every student too, just because all students need to use guns for good purposes and not bad ones.

EdTech is so biased on the issue of AI they have become a 24-hour-a-day commercial for it. Is there not anyone with a critical thought among them?

The field of Ed Tech’s future depends on the acceptance of AI, cell phones, and all manner of gadgets, and that’s why it is a marketing arm of the Big Tech. After all, creating students who are CRITICAL USERS might mean that they can choose to not use, and that’s bad for business.

Educational leaders, parents and teachers should take all arguments about AI and cell phones, etc. coming for Ed Tech with a grain a salt. 

Educators Should NOT Teach Students How to Use Technology with a Purpose: They Should Teach

Ed Tech advocates say, "We should teach students how to use technology with a purpose."

Do we teach students how to use a pencil, an eraser, or paper with purpose?

No, we don't start with the device, then teach students the ways in which to use the device; we start with the purpose, that which needs to be taught, not the device. The device is actually only relevant in its ability to serve the purpose.

If the device does not serve the instructional purposes, acccording to the judgment of the teacher, it has no place in instruction.

We also don't sit around inventing ways to use a pencil or paper in the classroom. We use them when they suit our instructional purpose, which comes first.

Education has gotten this wrong quite often in the past. We exchange our instructional purpose for the technology to achieve that purpose and spend all our time on the technology.

Too often, Ed Tech confuses the technology as the objective and the purpose.

Education should never be about teaching how to use technology with a purpose; it should be teaching and instruction as the purpose, and the technology might or might not help in that.

Educate Students, Not Consumers and Users of AI

It is not the function of education to sanitize and transform AI into a useful tool for humanity or even businesses.

If it is a useful tool, then it will find a place in that niche.

It is fallacy to think that if schools do not somehow educate to transform AI into a "magical tool of production" they are failures. This play on an educator's conscience is an old EdTech tactic and it is reprehensible.

There is tiresome post after tiresome post from AI experts, consultants and creators, who keep making hyped claims about its future. In reality, they ARE USING THE HYPE AND THE INEVITABILITY ARGUMENT TO ENSURE THEIR FUTURE INCOME AND WELL-BEING. The wise educator will cut through and look beyond the sales tactics.

After all, if AI flops or does not measure up to expectations, they will have made their money, and they can move on to the next technological invention like they have done in the past.

I understand when one has enthusiasm for a new gadget, but one must not let the glow and glitter shine so brightly that one can't really see. And, those of us out there that are subjected to this promo-rhetoric, need to keep our wits about us and our critical thinking hats on.

Digital Literacy and Information Is Teaching Students How to Become Dumpster Rats

Information literacy is now about teaching students how to sift through a garbage dump to find what is useful.

Its teaching students the art of being dumpster rats, looking for the worthwhile amongst the trash and discarded.

Finding value in the Web has become a salvage operation.

When Educational Leaders See Employees and "Human Resources" and "Human Capital: Are You Devaluing Teachers?

What is wrong with using the terms “human resources” and “human capital” as an educational leader?

I was reflecting today on my time in “human resources” and I realized that the entire time working in that area, the word “human resouces” always caused me just a slight shiver when I heard and used it. Why?

It is actually the word “resource” that is a bit bothersome, because it refers to “any material, person, or asset that can be USED to meet a need, solve a problem, or produce something value.” In other words, the term refers to USING people for some purpose.

I suppose it is just that word “USED” that bothers me, because that word so easily slips into manipulation and exploitation. The term “human resource” also makes me think of something like “natural resources” which are extractions from nature USED AND EXPLOITED for manufacturing purposes.

So the term “resource” has always had a slightly bad smell for me.

Then why not use the term “human capital” instead? Sometime ago, our North Carolina Public Schools started labeling its work force and teachers “human capital." When I heard the monthly webinar with the state called the “Human Capital Webinar” I had that same quiver of uncomfortableness.

But the word “human capital” has a bit of stench to me as well. Why? Capital means in many ways the same thing. Capital is a broad term for “financial assets, such as money, or physical assets, like machinery and buildings, USED to produce goods, services, or generate income or value.”

So is using “human capital” any better? Not really. One still has to slightly hold the nose on the “USED” part of that meaning if one sees people for more than just a tool to be used to reach a goal. It still has that slightly off-putting smell.

But, I suppose if your intention is truly to USE people for these purposes, then these terms work well. 

Still, I can’t help but wonder how the use of the words “human resources” or “human capital” somehow deeply affects how leaders view those to whom they lead, especially school leaders. 

Words have meaning and they have power. I have always believed that, and the terms and words a leader chooses, has power over a school leader’s work.

By viewing people as “resources” or “capital” to be used and manipulated for organizational purposes seems to avoid attaching any other value for people other than how they can be used for those purposes. This means leadership is about using and manipulating people to produce, and I think too often, school leaders will resort to any tactics to achieve their purposes.

Just maybe that’s why “accountability” has become gospel to educational leaders. Educational leadership as a field has taken all it can from the world of business, including the terms “human resources” and “human capital.” Accountability in the form of test scores gives purpose, and teachers simply become the resources and capital to that end.

Using words like human resources and human capital allows the school leader in good conscious to engage in the same kinds of exploitation and manipulation tactics as business leaders sometimes engage in. It can use people for the achievement of a simply purpose: increased test scores.

Perhaps it’s all OK in the end, but I do think educational leaders need to be a bit skeptical of all these leadership concepts and philosophies that have infiltrated educational leadership as a field. 

Why? Because education is NOT just about “producing graduates” or even “producing citizens.” Narrowing education education into any single purpose or purposes limits its possibilities.

Education as a field is notorious for "relabeling" things when a term becomes fashionably and culturally unacceptable or somehow viewed negatively. For example, I still laugh to myself when I hear the word "learning cottages" to describe "mobile classrooms" or "classroom trailers." But I am not advocating a label change here, because this is not a language issue; it is a educational cultural issue and will not change by changing the "human resource" or "human capital" label. Those are only deeper symptoms of a way of thinking that sees employees as objects of exploitation for purpose. That's what should be the target for revision.

I realize that organizations are going to use the words “human resources” and “human capital.” But, I have always valued my own “slight discomfort” at the use of the terms, because it was always a reminder to me that, these terms did not have to determine how I viewed employees and that I could value them as the human beings they were too.

With the Instructure Canvas Data Breach It's Clear That Ed Institutions Either Pay Hackers Extortion Money or Pay Tech Solutionist Mob Bosses to Protect Data: The Cloud Is a Nasty Place

Do educational institutions need to rethink their use of all cloud solutions?

If educational institutions want to exist in the cloud, they seem to have to pay either extortionist hackers or pay the "Tech Mob" solutionists for protection.

With the Canvas data theft, I am convinced that all the web is perceived as a money extortion scheme by everyone.

The hackers extort money from educational institutions.

Then, educational institutions have the choice to pay the hackers or suffer their data spread everywhere.

Or, they can pay additional Mobsters, in the form of data protection solutions to keep their data safe.

What's wrong with this? Educational institutions have to pay ransom to someone regardless in order to keep their data as safe as possible.

Either way, if educational institutions choose to use any cloud solutions, they pay for the solution, then they pay for the mob protection of companies that provide security.

The web has turned into an unsavory place where one has to pay for protection. That is a problem.