Doug Johnson

The School of Hard Knocks
Head for the Edge, March 1998

So Ole visits his college advisor and admits that while he is interested in the sciences, he has a difficult time keeping them straight. “Yust, do vat I do, Ole,” his advisor suggests. “Remember dat if vat you are studying is green, it’s biology. If vat you are studying smells bad, it’s chemistry. And if vat you are studying doesn’t verk, it’s technology.”

Most of us at one time or another have had technology fail while we were trying to use it to teach. Last Tuesday was the first class meeting of a college course I’m teaching. The evening could have been used as a text book example of just how many things could go very wrong in a very short period of time. The interactive television connection could not be established but still made an annoying, unstoppable noise; the telephone in the classroom interrupted every few minutes; and my computerized slide presentation decided to develop seizures. Even the tried and true copy machine had skipped some of the pages of the syllabus.

Oh, the class I’m teaching is “Introduction to Technology in Education.”

Of course the students enjoyed my discomfort immensely and regarded with deep skepticism my promise that the class was to be a model for how technology can be integrated into the learning environment. I went home that night ready to start applying for jobs that did not include the use of anything that needed to be plugged in or turned on. Unfortunately, organic farmer, busboy, and school superintendent were the only alternative paths that came to mind.

So it was in this curmudgeonly frame of mind that I developed the following list of lessons from the school of hard technology knocks. Feel free to add your own.

1.    Technology makes good communications better and poor communications worse.
Some one once said that the copy machines duplicate human errors perfectly. A poor speaker amplified does not make things better for his audience. Poor spellers using a word processor can no longer hide spelling uncertainties with sloppy handwriting. Bad organization is exacerbated with a computerized slide show. Sounds and animations cannot make up for a lack of content in a multimedia presentation.

2.    If you want a teacher to use technology, it had better be reliable.
It’s really hard to get a teacher to use a new technology again when it doesn’t work the first time. As the song says so well, “Once bitten, twice shy.” The lesson for the technology coordinator is to check, test and try everything thoroughly before putting it in a teacher’s hands, especially if that teacher has the slightest reluctance to using technology. And don’t do it the hour before it is to be used, but a day or preferably a week before. (I am continually amazed at how many times I have seen a technology demonstration by a salesperson bomb. Why would I buy a product the “expert” can’t make work? Would I go to a surgeon who cut himself shaving that morning?)

3.    Don’t expect appreciation for improved technology. People only notice when it isn’t there or it doesn’t work.
Last year I got at least three calls a week complaining about the speed of our computer network. During the summer we increased the bandwidth more than ten fold. It’s now well into the school year and do you think I’ve head one word of how nice the fast network is? Of course not. I estimate it takes less than a month before an effective technology introduced into a classroom is simply taken as a given by its users. “Huh, haven’t we always had classroom telephones?”

4.    People don’t come and get information. You have to send it to them.
Few people will pull up a school’s web page to check for announcements on a regular basis. Paper notes sent to the recipient work, electronic mailing lists are effective, and “push” technologies show promise. But depending on a web page to provide timely news can’t be relied upon. That’s why the newspaper is delivered to your door.

5.    For some people the risk of using technology is so great, that they won’t use it unless it is impossible to do their job with out it.
No matter how many teachers you get to read their e-mail, file attendance electronically or use the electronic catalog to check for materials, there will be a small percentage who simply refuse. They will invent ingenious work-arounds to keep from touching stuff. They will train students, rely on other teachers, or go without. These folks as a rule are neither stupid nor belligerent, and I at am a loss to explain why they are so resistant to the digital way of doing things. Perhaps they had bad experiences with small appliances as very young children.

6.    Technology can be a great excuse.
“I know I sent it to you The e-mail must have lost it.” As one journalist put it, technology is becoming the new way of saying, “the dog ate my homework.” In my experience the networks, the email, the fax machine, the voice mail, and the electronic library catalog work with 100% reliability – or they do not work at all. It’s easy to tell. But people being people, they will look everyplace but at themselves when things go wrong.

Pardon my grumpiness. I’m sure I’ll be in a far better mood next month. Provided I find the lost file I was just working on. Darn computer must have eaten it.