למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

When I turned the corner into the classroom, sure enough, smiling kids all peered up at me from their brightly colored yoga balls.

Behind desks.

In rows.

Most instances of Chromebooks, Google Classroom, iPads, smartphones suffer the same fate of taking potentially interesting technologies and “schoolifying” them. It’s window dressing that makes teachers, parents and others feel better about keeping up with times despite little complementary change in the power relationships between teachers and kids or choice given to students to have some increased agency over their learning.

We have a lot of choices, but we don’t really have any choice.

במלים אחרות, החדשנות של טרנד העיר החכמה, שאמור לפתור בעיות תנועה וניידות בערים המצטופפות, עושה את ההפך. "לכאורה, עלינו להיות מאושרים מייעול השירותים והזמינות הבלתי־נתפשת שמביאות אפליקציות בתחום הניווט, מציאת חניה, הזמנת מוניות ושיתוף נסיעות", אומר אייל צאום, מחלוצי התחום ויועץ בישראל ובאירופה בפיתוח ערים חכמות. "הבעיה היא ששפע החדשנות מוצע כמעט אך ורק לסוג אחד של תחבורה — המכונית הפרטית. התוצאה היא עלייה בשימוש ברכב הפרטי וירידה בשימוש בתחבורה ציבורית. באופן פרדוקסלי, הייעול והשיפור הכביד את עומס הפקקים וגרם להחרפה של כל החוליים הנלווים לניידות הנסמכת על תחבורה הפרטית".

הנוחות הטכנולוגית חיבלה גם ביוזמות שנועדו לצמצם כניסת כלי רכב למרכזי הערים.

The school board didn’t allocate the money for the networking upgrade because the school board thought that the only real difference between iPads and Chromebooks was that the latter had an attached keyboard. Apparently, no one had explained the networking needs of Chromebooks to the board.

In June, the pilot project was deemed a huge success. The teachers had put a tremendous amount of effort into creating new, inquiry-oriented curriculum materials that exploited the collaboration software. Student engagement in classwork was up — as was student achievement. The principal was pleased and told the teachers that they would be able to use the carts of Chromebooks again in 2016-2017.

Of course, there were all sorts of rules about when a cart could be signed out and for how long it could be signed out. The icing on the cake rule on cart sign out was this: Those using the computing devices for state testing purposes had priority. State tests, district tests, and even classroom tests had priority over curricular use of the computing devices. In effect, then, there was no way the two English teachers would have the kind of access in 2016-2017 to computing devices for their students that they had enjoyed in 2015-2016.

Typing practice gets priority over curriculum!

Officials said they opposed a delay in part because new state and national tests will be taken on computers, and they don't want Los Angeles students to lack the necessary experience with them.