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.

Ed Tech Doesn't Need to Advocate for Technology: It Needs to Shine a Spotlight on Its Flaws Too

One key component of any Digital Literacy Program? Web content is not always there due to its merit; it's there because someone "pays for its spread" and "games the delivery algorithms."

Of course, the most astute users already know this.

But if we want truly digitally literate students, they need to know the games people play to get noticed.

They need to know that all web content, especially that disseminated on platforms, is not necessarily there due to its merit, but because it is like a paid informercial or because someone knows the algorithmic game.

As schools grapple with AI, it is important to include in literacy the games behind its creation as well. Its use of web content, including pirated copyrighted content in its development. Also, its use of exploited labor to train models, and its massive consumption of our natural resources and power.

Too often, educators get caught up in the shiny gleam of technologies as gems and fail to see that most of the time what they really have are rhinestones.

Ed Tech promotes the "gemstones" myth for all technologies.

Ed Tech Defends Devices Not Students: There Is an Attention Problem and It's Not the Screentime That's the Problem: It's the Products or Screens

Many in Ed Tech are striking back against those wanting to control screen time with bans and restrictions. They rely on the old “utilitarian argument” used by gun advocates. “Devices don’t distract students; students distract themselves” they say.

How ludicrous does that sound when the devices are PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED AND ENGINEERED by Big Tech to “distract” and “capture attention?”

Sure, it’s not the time spent behind the screen that is the problem. Its the products that Ed Tech uncritically subject students to.

It’s devices and apps that are purposefully engineered for addiction. The product is the problem. It’s how it’s made and that is of concern.

These companies aren’t going to change their money-making products, and their goal is more and more addictive and distracting designs with each new feature.

In the classrooms, teachers are fighting “mech-dealers” (the tech-equivalent of meth dealers), who sell these addictive products and who only want students attention and data so they can make more money.

That is the problem with screens.

Instead of working with these Ed Tech companies and serving students and their attention on a silver platter,  why not join with those who want to address these issues. 

No, like Ed Tech does when their devices flop, it’s the teachers’ fault; it’s the school’s fault.

It’s an implementation problem, they say. Just maybe, the product is the problem.

Come on Ed Tech, advocate for students, not the Tech and those peddling it.