We have previously pondered how our almost instantaneous access to information may drastically change what we can -or even should- be doing in our classrooms. I recently got this same realization/insight delivered from an unexpected source.
I found myself in a brief, serendipitous e-mail conversation with Dr. David Sallee, recently retired as President of William Jewell College in Liberty, MO. He related the following story:
“At Jewell, in 2011, I think, we had a faculty workshop to help faculty learn how to best use technology in teaching and learning. In that workshop, the speaker asked us (faculty and administrators) if we knew who Sugata Mitra was. No one knew, so the speaker told us to find out. Literally every person in the room grabbed their phone or their tablet and looked it up. In 30 seconds, someone had the answer.
“Then the speaker said, ‘I am really irritated with you people. I am the expert; you brought me here to teach you; I am standing right here; I asked the question, so I probably know the answer, but not one of you asked me.’
“He went on to say this, ‘The issue is that they [the students] don’t need you for what they used to need you for. Your students don’t need you for content. They have all the content they will ever need on their phones. You had better figure out what they do need you for.’
“That was an ‘aha’ moment for me, . . . It set us on a different path related to teaching and learning.”
As I think about this anecdote of Dr. Sallee’s, I’m struck by several quick thoughts. They probably all need further examination:
- While the anecdote above takes place with college faculty, it’s clear that its implications extend to K-12 classrooms as well. Fourth graders can google information as quickly as college students.
- How do we (continue to?) prepare future teachers for teaching in this kind of environment, when technology allows instant information? This is both subtle and complicated.
- As an aside, I’d probably quibble with leader’s use of the word ‘content’ above. Not all ‘content’ in an ideal course is ‘information’. Perhaps this is semantics, but we could probably spend an entire column there.
Finally, I’m struck by the phrase “They don’t need you for what they used to need you for.” It provides lots of grist for the mill as we re-consider the classrooms of the future and the present.
All this should lead us to a crucial question. And it may also prompt an interesting perspective check. The question(s) is/are probably obvious: What do/will our students need teachers for? How does this change what happens in the classroom? And, again, how do we prepare for it?
The related perspective check is a little subtler, perhaps. In one sense, thinking about a classroom where technology can provide instant information changes everything about what happens in these classrooms. And yet, in another very real sense, it changes nothing! It takes us back to our ever-present question of ‘what is education?’. The goal of education from the days of Jefferson and before was never (solely) to provide tons of information, was it? The broader goal was and is to prepare students for life. This is to say, to help produce good citizens who are also articulate, able to think broadly, reason critically, communicate well and fairly, and so on. Without having the burden of having students learn, memorize and/or be tested on readily-available information, we can accomplish those goals even better!