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A “Napster Moment” in Education

“Technology has not revolutionized education yet,” said Mike Berlin, director of strategic initiatives at Macmillan New Ventures (a sister company to Scientific American). “Investment and technology are in place, but we’re fighting 200 years of inertia, and nobody knows exactly how it’s going to play out.” The key, he added, was to try to avoid mistakes like those made by the music industry on its road to iTunes. “This is a Napster moment for education,” he said. “It’s a big opportunity and an existential threat.”

But these technologies aren’t disrupting education itself. That’s up to the teachers, students, and administrators. They’re the ones who need to figure out what to make of the transformative technologies and with having free (or nearly free) access to content and each other.

Education is not just about granting access to content. If it was, then we’d close every school and just let people go to the library. Education is about the activities we do with each other in our various roles, to build/connect/try/experiment/explore/create/etc… – these are things that build on content, but content itself is not sufficient for education.

Yes. But don't forget, Technology is NOT just a tool.

I have struggled back and forth with the idea of whether technology is just a tool, or is it truly transformative. Yes, the way people use technology is important, but again, when used in a certain way, it transforms. I am certain I may be saying something that has been said by Neil Postman and others....

Digital tools are playing an increasingly important role in the work of successful individuals primarily because they make evaluating, inventing, creating and collaborating more efficient. Without a fluency in using technology to facilitate productive endeavors, students truly are unprepared for the future.

.... digital tools are playing an increasingly important role in the work of successful individuals primarily because they make evaluating, inventing, creating and collaborating more efficient. Without a fluency in using technology to facilitate productive endeavors, students truly are unprepared for the future.

Training teachers to become fluent users of Web 2.0 and other technology tools will have an impact only if those teachers also experience a radical shift in their beliefs about the purposes of education, and a new focus on students as responsible for their own learning. Otherwise, learning how to use the tools will become the primary goal.

I sometimes worry [that] it’s very easy for computers to give feedback these days. It’s seen as this great thing. Students are filling out answers to problem sets and exams. Right away it shows them if they’re right or wrong and they can get feedback right away, which can influence what they do next. Getting feedback is great. I’m all for feedback.

My concern, it’s only easy to give feedback on certain types of knowledge and certain types of activity. I think there’s a real risk, that we as a society, are going to end up giving too much privilege to the types of knowledge and the types of activity that are most easily evaluated and assessed computationally.

Yes, we should take advantage of the data. But there are other ways of trying to get information as well. For example, if we want to understand how and what children learn, sitting down and talking to one of the students can also be very useful.

And it highlights too, I think, the huge gulf between those like Gates who have a vision of computers as simply efficient content delivery and assessment systems and those like Seymour who have a vision of computers as powerful discovery and learning machines. The former does things to children; the latter empowers them to do things -- to do things in the world, not just within a pre-defined curriculum.