On Tues­day night, I had the oppor­tu­nity to hear John Avalon speak at Iowa State Uni­ver­sity.  John is the author of Wingnuts, How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijack­ing Amer­ica.  Although his mes­sage, doesn’t have a direct rel­e­vance to what I usu­ally write about, I feel com­pelled to build off of his message.

John’s book focuses on how the extrem­ists on both sides in pol­i­tics “came to dom­i­nate the country’s polit­i­cal dia­logue” and his book  along with his No Labels orga­ni­za­tion aim to show the way back to a smarter national con­ver­sa­tion.  The hope in his mes­sage cen­ters around the fact that there are many more peo­ple in the mid­dle than at either extreme in pol­i­tics.  Build­ing con­cen­sus and devel­op­ing a voice for that large group in the mid­dle is truly what he is push­ing for.

It seems that more and more, the hos­tile envi­ron­ment that exists in pol­i­tics is begin­ning to be seen in edu­ca­tion.  Many states are cur­rently in the mid­dle of fierce bat­tles over edu­ca­tion bud­gets and unions.  My state of Iowa has also been debat­ing uni­ver­sal preschool, and I’m guess­ing we’ll soon be mov­ing into a debate about merit pay for educators.

Those of us involved with using tech­nol­ogy to trans­form edu­ca­tion have also cer­tainly been involved in con­ver­sa­tions with the “non-believers”.  Those indi­vid­u­als who don’t seem to believe that tech­nol­ogy can have a pos­i­tive impact on schools or stu­dents.  The chal­lenge for us, and them, is to build con­sen­sus.  Rather than focus­ing on how tech­nol­ogy can enhance so many things, maybe our con­ver­sa­tion needs to start with what things we want our schools to teach.  If we can first agree that we need to teach col­lab­o­ra­tion, research, pre­sen­ta­tion, inquiry, etc., we at least have devel­oped a com­mon goal.  The chal­lenge is then show­ing how tech­nol­ogy can help bet­ter teach each of those skills.  If it doesn’t, then we need to con­sider if it is the right tool.

Nick Sauers