Advice to Teachers and School Leaders About Tech and AI from 1969 That Is Still Sound Today

There was an educational technologist who provided sound wisdom about AI and all technology in 1969.

Anthony Oettinger, who was a Harvard researcher, acknowledged in his 1969 book “Run, Computer, Run: The Mythology of Educational Innovation,” that instructional technology could lead to improvements in education.

But…he also provided some words of wisdom that Ed techies have forgotten.

He cautioned that instructional technology can’t be “force-fed, oversold, and prematurely applied.

Ed Tech has never taken that advice and plunged into implementation with every new wave of technology that arrives. Perhaps that’s just another reason that the allure of screenbans is so strong today.

With every new technology since the PC, school leaders and ed tech advocates jump to force-feeding those new technologies through “strategic implementation plans” and “forced professional development” without ever taking the time to critically examine those technologies’ places in schooling, teaching and learning.

Then, school leaders and ed techies move to engaging in the very “oversales” tactics that Oettinger warned about. Propagandistic presentations and sales language like “gamechanger, disruptive, and transformative” are the go-to words in this over-selling tactics before anyone has even really been able to explore the technology. Implementation is treated like a “marketing problem” and not whether the technology is actually useful.

Finally, school leaders and ed techies prematurely apply the technologies in widespread fashion. School leaders want to boast about their schools being 1-to-1 schools, AI schools. Ed Tech consultants want to boast about the number of keynote speeches they’ve made and the hours of PD conducted. This happened with earlier tech and it is happening again with AI. The over-selling has generated the hype without really giving teachers and students and researchers time to examine the technology.

Ed Tech has immediately jumped to the search for proof that they were right about AI’s transformative power without giving the technology any time to develop.

Ed Tech’s problem is that it has never encountered a technology that was NOT disruptive, transformative, or a gamechanger. By default, anything silicon-based that comes along fits the bill.

Ed Tech is more into selling technology instead of critically and methodically examining as well as exploring possibilities.

I end with three things offered as advice to school leaders and teachers that captures Oettinger’s 1969 advice:

-Don’t force-feed the tech through strategic implementation plans and mandated PD. Allow time for small-scale experimentation and even resistance if it arises.

-Don’t oversell or even feel like you have to sell a technology. If the technology is miraculous, it will demonstrate this. If it has no promise then it will show this too.

-Finally, don’t engage in premature application ever! Tech options like AI hasn’t been around long enough to be the salvation of education. Don’t talk implementation. Instead talk about experimentation and exploration. Give the tech time to prove itself.

Oettinger’s advice is not antiquated, but that’s how sound wisdom often is, if we don’t allow the glare and glitter of new technologies blind us.