Edtech in the age of high-intensity distraction
The learning apps and resources that teachers want kids to use almost always sit inside a browser that’s inside an operating system that’s inside a device.
Educators want those “containers” to be as invisible as possible, and for a time they were. But technology companies want those containers to be impossible to ignore.
And so our devices, browsers, and even now some of our most basic tools have become heat-seeking missiles for our attention, designed by the world’s brightest behavioral scientists to compel our eyeballs to linger on advertisements.
I love teaching with technology, but every year it’s getting harder to get my students to the good stuff.
I love teaching with technology, but every year it’s getting harder to get my students to the good stuff.
It wasn’t always this bad.
In 2003, I taught 9th grade World History in a pilot classroom with a cart of WiFi-connected laptops, a set of 30 beautiful blue and orange clamshell Apple iBooks.
I wasn’t the very first teacher in the United States to have a one-to-one, internet-connected classroom, but there weren’t too many folks earlier than me.
My school had an intranet service called FirstClass that did just about everything that Google for Education does today: collaborative documents, shared file folders, instant messaging, class syllabi, assignment submissions, and all the good stuff.
