Notes from a Podcaster: On Technology and Innovation

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Let me get right down to what will be a deeply personal entry, if one that also attempts to reflect upon the more academic implications of Lankshear and Knobel’s theories. 

I found our Skype session with Paul Bogush on Monday so perspective-altering that I felt almost as though I couldn’t contribute to it because there would have been too much to ask. I wanted to know more about “unschooling” techniques, and ways to reach particularly restive students, and how to tailor approach to demographic.  I wanted to find out what happens on the first two days of Mr. Bogush’s class that draws the students together into a community, and whether it’s simply meaningful assessment that invests students so much in their work that they’re willing to work harder than they do in any other class.

The session was as rich on a pedagogical level as it was troubling on the personal level.  Our class conversation forced me to confront what is a deep crisis for me regarding teacher predisposition and effectiveness. 

I don’t think anyone enters the teaching profession expecting to be a mediocre teacher.  I could be wrong, of course - but I think that, more often than not, teachers who are ineffective may think they’re doing a great job when they’re not.  Like members of other professions who may not perform at the top of their fields, they may have settled:  settled into a certain, static type of pedagogical orientation or settled into the practice of absolving themselves of student disinterest. 

Part of “settling” in the teaching profession, I think, is failing to recognize (or losing the ability to identify in the first place) the ways in which “baggage” limits an individual’s practice. Mr. Bogush mentioned that he became a teacher because he was dissatisfied with the way the majority of teachers went about the business of teaching. Namely, Mr. Bogush specified that many people who become teachers do so because they were the students who were “good” at school.  The baggage of this type of teacher is the baggage of a comfort zone reinforced by the educational establishment. These teachers were the ones for whom the current system worked, and works, perfectly:  because they were good at reading, writing, and listening carefully to an authority figure in class, these teachers model their teaching practices and expectations for students on this model while failing to recognize that this model is neither the most effective nor the most comprehensive—nor, most importantly, innovative in the way that pedagogy needs to be innovative. As Ken Robinson so effectively and artfully explains in his RSA Animate video, the current educational system is ill-adapted for the 21^st century in many ways.  Yet many teachers are complicit in the system. They may write solid lessons structured around curriculum-based assessments, but they fail to revolutionize current practices.

There are a few reasons I’m hesitant about heading straight into teaching next year at 23, but this is the main one:  I have been nothing but a “good student” my entire life.

Part of my reluctance to share my Animoto video in class on Monday was because it was personal and, like Pat, I tend to shy away from sharing too much.  My five-word memoir for the presentation, interspersed between admittedly formulaic and crappy default pictures, is “Is this the right continent?” (I wanted to use “What if this isn’t the right continent?”—but while the rules admit memoirs that consist of less than six words, I don’t think Smith Magazine would tolerate seven).  Many of my friends are doing radically different things this year:  those who have chosen to stay domestic are getting their first jobs, moving into their first places, relishing their first paychecks.  Those who are going abroad, as many from my college traditionally do, are teaching English in Thailand and South Korea, or else doing scientific research in Germany or working to promote public health in Rwanda or starting their own nonprofits in Cameroon.

And I am in school—albeit a very good school—doing exactly what I’ve always done, which is to complete all required reading and annotate it thoughtfully and write essays which synthesize several articles or complicate one in particular.  I’ve gotten better at contributing to class discussion, but I remain most comfortable with listening intently and following class procedure. 

This is why our class conversation with Mr. Bogush affected me so much, I think.  I would like to say that “school” qua institution has done this to me, but in reality I think that it’s me who’s done this to me.  I had other options this year that would have forced me out of my comfort zone:  theoretically, like my schoolmates, I could have taught in Seoul or Hong Kong. I could have worked on a vineyard in California, or tried to get into the publishing industry. I was actually placed as a Teach for America corps member in Newark, NJ, before receiving my acceptance at TC.  I declined the position because, after much internal debate and conversations with professors of education at my college (which nonetheless continue to leave me conflicted regarding the purpose and effectiveness of teacher education programs), I felt that I would ultimately serve my students better if I pursued traditional route certification. In doing so, however, I gave up a chance for self-discovery and growth that I sometimes regret.

The best teachers are innovators.  There is no question about it.  The best teachers—the life-changing mentor types—are the ones who find authentic ways to invest students in their work, to see both its personal and societal relevance, and (most importantly) to change their approach if students seem unresponsive. They’ve probably done many things and learned enough about themselves in the process to rely on their own judgments and ideas; consequently, they’re able to identify problems within the system and develop visions appropriate to fixing those problems.  Complacency fosters neither anger nor innovation. 

And technology is integral here, not only because it more fully prepares students for the collaborative nature of the professional world they’ll be entering, and not only because it allows students to publish to a (theoretically) worldwide audience, but also because it depends on innovation of the tried-and-true for effective use. The justification for technology in the classroom shouldn’t be to “engage students”; learning doesn’t need to be “fun,” and standards should never be lowered to “cater” to students. What learning does need to be is meaningful. The implications of work in the classroom need to be real and immediate, which is why I believe blogging can be so effective and why it is an example of a technology essential to the English classroom. Nothing needs to be sacrificed to integrate it into the classroom, and the class as a whole stands to gain more than can be measured in terms of motivation and investment when students write conscious of reception by their peers and communities.

Only some technologies, of course, facilitate true innovation.  Those that fail to enhance the curriculum in meaningful ways can be abandoned for their old-fashioned counterparts without repercussion. It might even be better if they are:  efficiency is not always key, and it should never be the key justification for the inclusion of technology in the classroom. On the personal level, I can only hope that I’m not relying too much on the innovation the right technology promises to save my classes from banality:  there are certainly many ways (probably a majority of ways) to be innovative in the classroom that don’t require new technologies.  

But—to return to the concept of “baggage”—the dangers of ignoring new technology consist of much more than depriving students of the knowledge of how to create a podcast or web video, much more, even, than of depriving them of authentic assessments. The danger is for the teacher, who without due consideration of new possibilities (digital or not) risks complacency in a day and age when complacency is unacceptable if the educational establishment really is as troubled as it seems to be.  It is a personal danger as well as a societal one; it is a difficulty that requires constant self-awareness and assessment to combat.  It’s a danger that, as a “good student,” I feel particularly prone to, but one which I plan to fight tooth-and-nail.