Chicken Bones, Augury and the Future of Tech Integration

CC: DBreg2007

15 years ago I was still carrying my plastic box of 3.5 inch floppies to the computer lab, and at home I had a Macintosh Performa and a dot matrix printer. 10 years ago I had the same box of disks, the same computer at home and a row of shiny new iMacs in my classroom. 5 years ago I had a MacBook Pro, a Flash Drive and no computers in my classroom.  Today? My laptop practically weighs less than that box of disks from 15 years ago, I store files "in the cloud" and every single one of my students has a device that makes my Macintosh Performa seem like a piece of slate and chalk and is smaller than a magazine.

Given those changes, making a prediction about the next 5, 10 or 15 years seems like a futile exercise. Technological growth seems to be exponential and I image it will only continue to be. To guess about hardware is impossible. Faster, stronger, smaller seems likely. The NMC Horizon Report is a good place to start looking at the possibly more reasonable task of technology usage. Without a doubt, tablet computing, cloud computing and gesture-based technology will continue to take precedent over traditional computing. This falls in line with the "faster, stronger, smaller" mentality that seems to dominate the technology market these days. For example, as tablet computers like the iPad continue to develop, they will be able to do more and more and continue to replace larger machines. I'm still confused about the "internet of things" and its implication in the classroom. That said, I'm sure I'll be dealing with it in 5-15 years. Finally, methods such as the TPack and The Florida Center of Instructional Technology's Technology Integration Matrix assure us that technology will continue to be seamlessly integrated into our normal classrooms.

So, where does that leave me in 5, 10 or 15 years? I'm sure that I'll still be playing catch up with tech in my classroom. I know that may sound pessimistic for someone who is a "go-to guy" for tech questions, a four COETAIL class graduate and a lover of technology, but my predictions don't come from based on any of those conditions. I'm afraid that the very model of school is holding us back from the potentials of true technology integration. Our very concepts of schools and classrooms and sequential learning restrict the progress and revolutions that could be occurring. We hear over and over again of the need to "explode" the concept of traditional schools (here, here, Sir Ken Robinson or Alan November anyone?), but little has changed in 100 years.

So that's the result of my chicken bone augury, but I wish it was glorious. I wish it involved human body technology hacks or a Day Made of Glass, but I'm sure it's me, in a classroom, playing with the most recent technology and trying to "make it work" within constraints instead of letting it change and shape educational practice.

UPDATE: since writing this post, I've been exposed to the work of Clayton Christensen and his book, Disrupting Class.  This entry from the online version of Edutopia summarizes the main point from the book and echoes my sentiments about the future of tech in readout schools.

"This vision for the classroom of the future is not new. It's one that people have talked and dreamed about for years in a variety of forms: Students partake in interactive learning with computers and other technology devices; teachers roam around as mentors and individual learning coaches; learning is tailored to each student's differences; students are engaged and motivated.

But this is far from the reality in most classrooms today. The classroom of today doesn't even look that much different from the classroom of thirty years ago, save for some interactive whiteboards instead of chalkboards, as well as some computers in the back of the room. How can we start down the path to transform the classroom?"

 The question remains, when will we allow the transformation to take place?