Technology & Your Education. What’s new and not so new in remote learning? | BRIght & Early

0:04 hello young people of the internet welcome back to another episode of bright and early from the bill of rights institute my name is rachel davidson humphreys and i’m here with my colleagues kirk and gary hello hey so as we start another as we’re finishing up another week in quarantine land formerly known as the united states uh

0:26 we wanted to check in with you all give you some things to think about as we’re thinking about things um so guys how are you doing this week how’s how’s the week wrapping up for you it’s going pretty well i’m i’m finding myself uh on zoom or on you know teleconferencing quite a bit uh i’m getting used to it um and i’m spending a lot of time

0:46 thinking about next week and the week after that and the week after that how about you all the week after that yeah i’m right there with you i think i have now spent more cumulative time in front of my computer uh than ever in my life which has been an interesting adjustment i think adjusting the the way that we have conversations the way that we’re

1:08 uh talking through and working on projects together has changed and it’s i think it’s really hitting me this week that it is it’s it’s a lot of uh technology interfacing right and i think that i mean that’s something again this week because i think that like the frenzy is over a little bit like the the kind of we’re settling into that

1:29 this is the pattern of our work and school life so i had class last night for three hours after work um right so we’re just that this is how we’re gonna be interacting um and that got us thinking just as a group and independently about kind of the history of technology and

1:50 innovation and america and kind of situating us in the moments kirk i know you’ve been thinking about the history of this because that’s what you want to do yeah yeah it is what i am of wants to do at times but i do think it’s interesting that we’ve we’ve lived through we collectively both you students and us um you know three of

2:11 us sitting here through a period of very great economic and technological change um i mean i i think even five years ago uber which is a word that’s used as a verb now wasn’t even as big of a thing nearly as big of a thing as it is now i mean which is an incredible thing maybe five years is generous but certainly ten years ago um

2:32 it wasn’t and so that’s just one example of many examples of how our changing is interface and thinking about us being on zoom had me thinking about how this technology and the efficiency with which we’re able to interact with one another has really shaped how it is we’re experiencing this pandemic in this isolation um and and i

2:52 think that that’s going to lead to a lot of changes in in education um and immediately of course wanting to connect that to a previous period where there was a lot of rapid uh economic and technological change that then led to uh change in education which was really at the turn of the the 19th of the 20th century um thinking about uh there’s lots of new

3:13 technologies emerging or being uh really maximized at that point so you’re thinking about train travel so travel becomes much more instantaneous factories are continuing to grow um sort of the you have the the taylorism movements or the perfecting of that manufacturing style um people really fine-tuning the division of labor within factories all

3:33 kinds of things come out from that but one of the things that grows out from that is that education shifted to better serve the needs of that world right so moving from older models of education too more of i think what we recognize now with grading’s like a graded system you know a grade that you are in uh those are all things that were created

3:54 and implemented um many of them at the turn of the century which i think it’s interesting because we’re out now all seeing what may be another evolution of education as youth students are experiencing firsthand there’s some bumps that come along with that there’s some some probably some good moments and probably some frustrating moments and uh probably a lot of learning moments um

4:15 that come whether you know directly from what you’re learning from your from your teachers but you’re really learning alongside your teachers at this point too which is interesting yeah and i think i think one of the things that we’ve we’re noticing with that is this kind of the energy that comes from transitioning

4:38 fades a little bit but it’s we still need to be really active in in continuing to to to make sure that these learning experiences are as robust as they could be right and so one of the ways that we do that is we continue to project and think about okay well this class was like this but what is the next class like

4:58 and like what is the assessment going to look like or or how can i do a project like this right and so we’re constantly future oriented and future thinking and i know gary has been thinking a little bit about how people in the past thought about the future especially of education yeah absolutely um and a lot of what

5:19 kirk was saying is it was similar to what i’ve been thinking of as well um i i also want to put on my my historian hat as the history teacher my last unit was always on history of the future because you know once you’ve been teaching or are around enough you start seeing that history class is just everything up to that point that point

5:39 is a moving point and so there’s a lot of value to looking to the future uh to understand where you are now and possibly where you’re going um and it generates an interesting thing about purpose right and and the purpose of education itself because so often you look at school as this is

5:59 the way it is because that’s the way it is but it turns out it’s not always been a certain way and ultimately there’s there’s a reason why we do things in the same way right now there’s going to be a reason why school is going to look a little different now many of you right now may have already started or are going to start online classes

6:20 um doing things virtually and as kirk said it’s it’s going to take some learning from everybody we are all now on the same page about learning these things and there’s some good and some some bad um but ultimately it’s different and ultimately it asks that question what is the purpose of the things that we do so you’re right i was looking um

6:40 i was looking at um some ideas of futurists of the past uh kirk mentioned that it was at the turn of the 20th century that a lot of this thought was happening possibly because of the industrial revolution the idea of factories new ways of doing things so i dug up um some old postcards that were made um these were postcards were from around

7:02 1899 to 1901. this particular collection uh was actually in the possession of a very famous futurist of the past who is no longer with us uh someone named isaac asimov and i i’ve actually been starting to go back and re-read some of his uh foundation series if you want to learn about school

7:22 and the future it is great it’s shockingly good series um particularly if you like robot stuff anyway that’s that’s for another time that’s for a future occasion um but here’s an example uh this is an artist uh this postcard’s from around 1901 so right around that turn of the century uh by jean-marc um and if you can see

7:43 that and i’ll i’ll open to the two of you this is from 1901 about what the year 2000 would be like do you see anything unusual or familiar or anything strike you about this one well i mean it looks a little bit like like cell phones or facetime or zoom being used right there are more wires than we need

8:04 now but it’s it’s a similar concept yeah absolutely at a time when the idea of i mean there’s no television in 1901 so the idea that you could project images and talk to someone far away is is a pretty remarkable idea we haven’t even gotten into the fact that they just

8:25 yeah there is one major difference though and that’s that um these these lovely people are sitting at a restaurant outside together and that’s right that’s that’s true different than the now that’s it’s kind of curbside seeming i mean i see their plane parked right there so maybe the the uh the restaurant is bringing out to the curb

8:45 but you’re right they do seem closer than six feet apart to each other good thing they’re utilizing the uh the good thing they’re usually utilizing the technology to talk to the other people there it’s true yeah yeah um but again speaking to the idea of of education and the thought here’s another one this one’s actually from a little earlier uh this is from 1828 oh goodness i went really fast

9:06 um this was called the march of intellect uh by william heath um and it’s a little hard to see in here but that change that kirk was talking about this is a satirical take about the technology of education a little hard to see i recommend looking it up but what that is is actually a university and the idea of the satire is if the

9:28 university is becoming this for lack of a better word factory what is that what impact is that going to have on society and as you can tell this artist is saying maybe not a great one but no matter what a change that is going to happen um and the last one i just wanted to show which is really great is again thinking about

9:49 your experience as a student right now and the idea of what the future of school is going to look like is this other one from the original author uh jean marcoate this one’s from 1899 and it’s at school you can see a teacher to the right here kind of inputting books into a machine

10:09 that is being transmitted to students somewhere what do you all think of this one yeah very internet-esque right uh you know maybe not maybe maybe a more physical representation than uh we would see but but i think the idea of knowledge transference through some kind of you

10:29 know electronic medium isn’t too crazy um and i think what’s interesting about this one and what’s interesting about the first image you showed is the strands of technology that they’re pulling on uh particularly you know in the in 1901 you know phones would have been fairly new airplanes weren’t even really a thing yet and so the things that they’re finding

10:49 to really create these images i think are just really interesting yeah absolutely pulling on on what you know but leaving it open to a future to say what is possible what is probable what is likely and what’s maybe preferable to like what would what would be good for the future and so that’s a great point kurt because that

11:10 leads me to a question i have for you the students out there you know i always like to ask you to observe what’s going on and maybe journal it and think all right what is the purpose of education right assuming there is a value to it which we think there is when you boil all of it down what is

11:30 your experience of what education needs to be does there have to be interaction with other people i mean you mentioned transfer of knowledge right there should be some gaining of knowledge but these are these are leading questions what do you think the purpose of education is and then what fulfills that purpose so for example does bringing people together online at the same time is that helping

11:52 to fulfill it um are certain assignments fulfilling it in a certain way are you pursuing your own learning and education um and i would love for you to be a futurist of yourself even right now even in the short term what do you think based on the way things have been going and your experience with the past couple of weeks or

12:12 even the past couple of years in school based on innovation and all these trends what do you think education is going to look like in september or a year from now or 10 years from now or you could be futurists like the turn of the century and say a hundred years from now how will education and those purposes

12:32 still happen and the fun thing is you’re not only as much of an expert of the future as anybody else because none of us have experienced it yet but being a young student you have a lot of input into making that future happen so we’d love to hear your thoughts and i think that that’s that’s one of those huge opportunities that exist

12:53 right now right that’s why this is this is a really exciting time for education uh you’ve seen a very rapid transition to platforms that not a lot of people were ready to use to pedagogy so theories of learning and how we teach that not a lot of teachers were ready to really really rise to use yet

13:16 um i think the teachers are all doing their very best and i i hope that you all are seeing that out there that this is a lot of your teachers not only are working to help support you but then they also have their own children at home right and so there’s and they also may have other responsibilities and so this is this is a lot of work to transition

13:36 in this new technology or to this new technology this rapidly right so in the history of so as you know all histories have subfields one of the subfields of history is the history of education and a subfield of the history of education is the history of educational technology and so how the technology of society influences

13:59 how we do education so the purpose of education has always been an interesting question right so gary touched on that and that’s actually something that people have thought about for a really long time there’s a book called the republic that was written by plato which is all about the purpose of education and so this is not an easy question that

14:21 he asked you to journal about so know that it that many different groups have thought about this a lot and whether and the other thing is that there’s a there’s a lot of conflicts between the the multiple purposes right there’s a professional purpose and a and a civic purpose and a like a growth purpose and they’re all these things that influence how we make choices about

14:42 our education and what we find value in and what i love so much about those um those prompts is for you to ask that question to yourself right you are at some stage in your education and you’re being given an opportunity to say what is important to me what is this all for and then ask how do i

15:05 make it more for that how do what do i do so for instance their every technology that has that has permeated society has found its way into our educational environments right whether that was the first chalkboard which was lauded as being the most transformative technology that has ever

15:25 existed it wasn’t because more technologies came but at the time it was this incredible technology or maybe it’s books or maybe it’s a projector can you imagine when you couldn’t project things in a classroom what is that gary this says my projector sometimes just for fun i like to catch

15:45 up on old reels and that was in your classroom right like that was a technology that was no longer that was what was available exactly but no longer being used and so as every like in the 60s the whiteboard the computer um and then as we go into today we have all of this these technologies of the

16:08 um e-learning technologies and the oer like so many online resources that you can have access to the lms which we all like whether it’s blackboard or canvas or moodle that you’re working on we’re all beholden to this platform now right that didn’t exist and so one of the things that

16:28 that i think is interesting is to think about not only our um our our own learning and what’s happening right now but also kind of where we’re positioned in the history of education technology so i’m i’ve been thinking about this for a while now for a couple of years i’m finishing up a masters in education and technology um and

16:49 if you’re interested you can scan this qr code and it’ll take you to a vr app that will let you explore the history of education technology um and just know that that you aren’t like everyone’s going through this together right now and i imagine that you’re not only seeing your stu

17:10 your your teacher struggle and your classmates struggle in different ways but you’re struggling in different ways um that’s also natural when a new technology comes on because you don’t have habits built up for how to structure your day or your or your own learning right so um i i like to think about whenever i think about the fact that i’m struggling with someone i like to find friends in that

17:32 struggle and if you’re not familiar with on femme of novagrod in the 13th century onfem uh was a young man in the 13th century who was assigned some uh some some grammar assignments on birchbark and he proceeded to become distracted as

17:55 he was doing those and doodle all over them one of which is a doodle where he um shows himself killing a guy on a horse and saying i am on finn and that’s how we know that his name is anthem so as you’re thinking about your own experience i i

18:15 take solace often in knowing that everyone has their own journey and their own struggles even onfem in the 13th century was struggling with his focus at a time when he was being asked to do things that were new for him um and so so as gary mentioned we’ve

18:35 been thinking about how to uh how to teach better for a long time kirk mentions we’ve been thinking about how to be better for a long time every new technology requires us to rethink how we engage with one another um and i mean the the founding itself was a technology and governance right a

18:57 new technology and the idea of a of a democratic republic that required some transitions in society and required people to continue to be future thinking uh gary mentioned but there’s actually uh um stop sharing my screen gary mentioned that there’s actually a uh a term for this called a futurist one

19:20 of my professors his name is brian alexander as a futurist i know gary you had a professor who was a futurist when you were in your graduate worker yes yes w warren wagar look him up he unfortunately also passed away but uh wonderful books on it yeah and so so futurists are professionally people who think about what the future

19:41 may hold brian is actually an educational futurist so it’s been really interesting to see his take on what’s happening um and one of the places as gary mentioned that we can go to to start to think about what the now means for our own education but also what it could mean in the future is to the the kind of fiction and sci-fi

20:02 especially uh world so if you haven’t read a book called ready player one gary and i have both read it um and it imagines a future where all students are online in a virtual reality all the time um and what that means for their own education but it’s not actually only about education it’s about friendship and about

20:23 what it means to be yourself it’s really it’s a fun book i really enjoy it don’t watch the movie the movie is not great the book is very very good um but there may be other other uh books out there that you know of i know the divergent series has this theme um a lot of gary’s images reminded me of brave new worlds the the opening sequences in brave new world where

20:43 they’re educating the children there’s also a book called the fourth r or you have le guin or heinlein or ender’s game kirk you i know you really like ender’s game um but there are a lot of places you can go to help you not only escape a little bit the present but to be that future oriented thinker because everything that’s happening right now

21:05 requires us to conceive of a better future and to act towards that better future and whether that’s supporting your teachers or supporting your classmates or supporting the people in your in your other communities um our biggest task is to be future oriented i think and so that’s that’s what we’ve

21:27 been thinking about when it comes to the technology yeah i think i mean i think it’s interesting right i think because tying to the major questions that you put out there for us rachel it’s it’s not just i mean it’s thinking about how things are going to be changing because change of one type or another is inevitable but it’s also keeping in mind those foundational questions of what what are we trying to accomplish here so

21:47 as we’re singing classrooms across the country grappling with these these big questions and in trying to get on with uh with going through the educational process what are we what are we trying to accomplish and how can that be assisted by new technology and also what are some of the challenges that new technology can pose to sort of those foundational things i think that it’s really exciting that students have an opportunity to be

22:09 going through this moment as unfortunate as it is but the the voice that you all have to shape where things go from here because of the experience that you’re living in right now i think it’s really profound uh and is a real a real opportunity yeah absolutely i think about the future too in terms of

22:30 you know it isn’t set there’s lots of different ways for the most part a lot of stuff’s going to stick around you know as you’ve seen through time but there’s a lot that changes as well um and i agree with you i think it’s an interesting as a student to think about the future in kind of two different ways and how you could be part of it one of them is what is the possible

22:51 future and and what is possibly going to happen but then there’s the what’s a preferable future what’s a better way and you can nudge or move just a little bit things toward that preferable is really powerful um as you were saying and so it’s a with interesting times come interesting opportunities and i think that’s really

23:13 good to remember right now yeah absolutely and so as always we really want to hear from you what are you reading what are you thinking about the future what are you thinking about the now how has technology changed your habits and how you’re working with your classmates how is technology how has the right now changed how you’re thinking about history and how you’re thinking about the future

23:33 we’d love to hear from you on facebook instagram twitter uh and here on youtube so on that note thank you all so much for your time we are always so glad to talk to you and and we really enjoy these conversations so thank you kirk thank you gary sure we’ll see you in the future we’ll see that’s right take care be well