This arti­cle was orig­i­nally pub­lished by Sam Gliks­man at http://iPadEducators.ning.com

In his book “Start with Why” and the accom­pa­ny­ing TED talk, author Simon Sinek claims that we’re all very clear about “what” we do.  In fact, you often define your­self by what you do — “I’m a teacher” for exam­ple. You  focus heav­ily on “how” you should do what­ever it is you do and usu­ally develop a rou­tine to make it easier.

Very few peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tions how­ever con­stantly dis­cuss and debate “WHY” they do some­thing. It’s only by reflect­ing on the ques­tion of “why” that enables us to develop and artic­u­late a mean­ing­ful vision for what we should be doing … and that cer­tainly applies to edu­ca­tion. Let me explain.

We each have a con­cept of what con­sti­tutes an ideal edu­ca­tion even though it’s likely we’ll dis­agree on many of its com­po­nents. There is how­ever one com­mon thread that most of us might agree upon. As strange as it may sound, we aren’t teach­ing chil­dren to become good stu­dents in school. After all, school is just a tran­si­tionary stage of their lives. Our objec­tive is to edu­cate and pre­pare them for life out­side school. What’s the pur­pose of help­ing a stu­dent ace a test if the learn­ing required for that test has no real-world mean­ing for the stu­dent? Ide­ally, we’d like to ensure they develop the nec­es­sary skills to become happy, pro­duc­tive adults and solid cit­i­zens in their lives out­side school.

We live in an era of expo­nen­tial change and ask­ing “why” helps con­stantly eval­u­ate whether we’re prepar­ing our stu­dents appro­pri­ately for their lives out­side school. We’re human and it’s a nat­ural ten­dency to fall into rou­tines — to con­cen­trate on “what” we do and “how” with­out regard for the ques­tion of whether it’s still rel­e­vant. We con­tinue fol­low­ing the same edu­ca­tional rou­tines and processes with­out ask­ing whether they are really prepar­ing chil­dren for life in an ever chang­ing soci­ety awash in technology.

Pur­chas­ing and using tech­nol­ogy to address ques­tions of “how” we teach won’t advance education.

If we use tech­nol­ogy to rein­force the same age-old edu­ca­tional processes then why bother? Some examples:

• We often use tech­nol­ogy to project a doc­u­ment or post it online instead of hand­ing it out.
• We still have stu­dents read a chap­ter and answer the ques­tions at the end but now they can use tech­nol­ogy to sub­mit typed responses. In some cases, they can even sub­mit them online.
• We can con­tinue to demand that stu­dents mem­o­rize facts for a test and use tools such as flash­card apps to help drill the facts.
• We still lec­ture from the front of the room but now we have a dig­i­tal white­board to enhance the process.

The fun­da­men­tal processes haven’t changed. Ask­ing “why” and look­ing out­side the walls of our schools may lead us to dif­fer­ent visions and new directions.

• Why only focus on text for exchang­ing infor­ma­tion when the world now com­mu­ni­cates with a vari­ety of mul­ti­me­dia and media flu­ency is a valu­able skill in the workplace?
• Why con­tinue using the same old text­books when we can access updated infor­ma­tion on any topic within sec­onds using the inter­net or dig­i­tal books?
• Why focus on sta­tic, deliv­ery and mem­o­riza­tion of edu­ca­tional con­tent when that con­tent pool is grow­ing at unprece­dented speeds and it’s clearly more impor­tant for stu­dents to be skilled in find­ing, ana­lyz­ing and using infor­ma­tion as they need it?

Using tech­nol­ogy effec­tively in edu­ca­tion requires much, much more than just tech­ni­cal skills. Instead, through the use of tech­nol­ogy we have the oppor­tu­nity to sculpt edu­ca­tional visions that address the real needs of chil­dren enter­ing a new world. 

Are we prepar­ing stu­dents for 20th cen­tury test­ing or prepar­ing them for life after school? If we plan on push­ing for more tech­nol­ogy use then we should all be ask­ing “why”.

Sam Gliks­man
samgliksman@gmail.com
Twit­ter: @samgliksman
http://iPadEducators.ning.com