“This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories,” a concerned commentator once spoke of a new technology. “[People] will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
The commentator? Socrates, quoting an Egyptian king. And the technology? Writing.Technology has always changed the way that we learn and indeed why we learn. Prior to the industrial revolution very few well off children were educated in a formal educative manner. Children tended to stay at home and learn from parents and the wider community, traditional crafts such as dry stone walling, animal husbandry and all the associated country crafts. the more able were able to get apprenticeships as blacksmiths and other skilled trades. Poor children were fortunate to attend Sunday school and obtain a rudimentary education ( mostly religious tenets).
The Industrial Revolution and its associated technology meant that children were employed in factories, the Factory Act of 1833 made two hours a day of formal education compulsory for children working in factories. In 1844 the Ragged Schools Union was founded to give schooling to very poor children. The growth of the British Empire and the associated demand for literate clerks and administrators led to gradual reform of public schooling to maintain a more literate workforce and gradually raised the school leaving age.The 1902 Education Act established a system of secondary schools.
We can see that technology has been a driver in education for many centuries. The advent of film and then video (through to DVD (via video disk) were heralded as the end of the role of the teacher as technology would enable knowledge to be self selecting and self taught. this was not the death knell of the pedagogue.
The advent of the computer age has moved the innovation of educational technology on apace. Ten years ago the idea of mobile computer tablets was only an idea from Science fiction. In 2010 when Apple launched the iPad following on the 3 year success of the iPhone the mobile revolution really became a reality.
To have almost instant access to the internet and ostensibly all of human knowledge, via a tablet you can carry or a mobile phone you can put in a pocket is truly a remarkable tool.
But a tool it is.
Whilst mobile technology can provide a great deal of answers and store a great deal of knowledge, it cannot enable you to learn without making an effort to learn. This is where all of technological innovation is lacking in terms of education. It can be summarised thus:
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.
You can provide all of the information in the world but you cannot make someone learn.
There are studies that have concluded that the human brain is being changed by the internet. ( 1below) This can be seen in everyday life with the ability to remember many phone numbers now no longer needed as our phones remember the numbers for us. however these changes i argue are not a new way of learning just an example of technology taking part of the role as Socrates agued above.
The desire to learn is innate, you need students willing to learn and teachers willing to try to impart knowledge and inspire whether by words or deeds. You also need to find subjects that connect with the student so that they become effective learners from choice. Whilst technology has changed the means we have to impart knowledge, from oral histories to stone tablets, from papyrus to wax tablets, from books to Radio, from film to the internet. These are all tools to impart knowledge rather than ways we actually learn.
References
1. Small, G.W, T.D Moody, P Siddarth, and S.Y Bookheimer. “Your Brain on Google: Patterns of Cerebral Activation During Internet Searching.” The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry : Official Journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. 17.2 (2009): 116-126. Print.
2. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141022-are-we-getting-smarter
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