Computers in classrooms may have the potential to radically enrich and democratize student learning, but the reality of ed tech typically looks very different. This extended episode of Kohn’s Zone features a stimulating conversation with Gary Stager, one of our foremost experts on this topic. He takes us beyond banal generalities (“technology has pluses and minuses”) in order to tease out which types, uses, and purposes are constructive and which are a waste of time – or worse. In what he calls our current “age of rising pedagogical authoritarianism,” tech often is put in the service of “managing children, ‘delivering’ instruction, narrowing the curriculum, and turn[ing] kids into question-answering ATMs.” Whereas, Stager insists, computers can and should help students to mess around with possibilities, create thrilling projects, and make sense of the world.

RESOURCES

Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager, Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom (2nd ed.), 2019: https://tinyurl.com/33k48zd8

Gary Stager, Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, 2021: https://tinyurl.com/mpdky2cw

https://constructingmodernknowledge.com/

Alfie Kohn, “The Sneaky Conservatism of Ed Tech,” Education Week, September 27, 2023: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/tech-conservatism/

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