Staying With the Times: Profs, Admin and Technology

I admit, I get a bit of a kick reading about the latest technology that has come out and then reading the comments on the article to see how many prophets of doom that have a PhD attached to their name like to come out and say that whatever the new gadget is will completely ruin education, etc etc etc.

I heard one about the Kindle, which I admit I don't know much about but if it's true that a student could just buy one of these then pay a lot less to download books onto it... well, from a students perspective that's pretty cool. (Yes I know there's the whole textbook industry to think about but at what point is it ridiculous that you can't buy a used book because the professor is using the newest edition that has 2 pages changed in it?)

Then I heard about the person who came up with (as a joke, I will add) the corrupted email attachment that students can pay $5.00 to download and send to their professors to buy a little extra time to write the paper. Again, I admit I giggled a little bit when I read that. Yes, I know it's ethically wrong to do, but if you were to ask a random sampling of students if they ever wished they had something like that I bet 75% would say that at some point in their life they wished they had thought of that. (It's that whole reality thing again!)

But that's not the point of this blog.

The point was the outrage (and rightly so, but still) of various professors and instructors in the comments section of this article. Many, many, many of them said "I never use email for anything in my class and after reading this I never ever will!" But here's where I get confused. Most of us in the business world use email on a daily basis for a lot of important communication. So why can't education hop on the same bandwagon? What is causing this horrible horrible fear that many academics have in both secondary school and post secondary education about using technology in the classroom? It's got to be more than the occasional corrupt file that a student sends to buy another day to write a paper. Why is there a seeming stubborn contingent that wants us to stay permanently in 1975? (Or earlier...) But yet we can't imagine a 16 year old driving a car now without a cell phone...

I do think that these things (email, Kindles, Blackboard and other online learning software, even social networking) are there to improve our lives and improve learning... if first we learn not to be afraid of them. (The ironic thing is as I'm writing this I'm looking at my cell phone which only calls people and can do text messages- nothing else... I intentionally bought a phone that doesn't have anything else on it, mainly because I don't need it. I'm not against it being out there and available, it's just not necessary for me at this time.) Plus, a LOT of the online software that is being used in higher education has options that prevent cheating. But if that's where kids are- on the computer and online... why not go to them instead of forcing them to conform to something out of date? Maybe we could look at adapting to them, since the 16-22 year old demographic tends to be on the cutting edge of the newest technology, and encourage them to take the technology and run with it. (Aren't we complaining about the lack of innovation and creativity in kids? I hear it quite a bit...) Who knows what might happen!

Moral of the story... adapt. Things won't ever, ever stay the same no matter how much we'd sometimes like them to, especially with the speed at which technology is evolving now. But it's not going to do anyone any good to dig your heels in and say you're not playing... so might as well join 'em if you can't beat em.

Anyway- read the article-- the issue it's about is one thing, but the response of the academics is what scares me.

Students? What do you think?
Teachers/professors? What do you think?