There are many doubts among teachers about the best way to deal with new technologies in the classroom. Some adopt as a method the pure and simple prohibition of cell phones in the classroom, for example. And others argue that it is better to leverage these technologies to stimulate student learning.
I've known strange cases, in which directors get a brand new computer lab, but for some reason, they are afraid of the students spoiling the equipment, and don't let them use it. This is a problem. And the worst thing is that it is understandable, from the perspective of a manager who knows how difficult it is to obtain and repair this equipment.
But it's complicated when the school has the equipment, but the students can't use it, or use it in a very restricted, very unproductive way. But there are many misconceptions regarding the use of technologies in school. There are many speeches that celebrate the purchase of equipment in itself, but we have to criticize that.
Prohibit or encourage? There are times when disciplining focus and strengthening concentration is really the most important thing to do. So, in that sense, it's worth disconnecting from that excess of Internet distractions to concentrate.
Internet is great, but we cannot ignore that what most children are doing is not a creative use of the Internet, but is pure procrastination. There are already many people suffering from this. On the other hand, the Internet has to be present at school, but in a critical way.
The school cannot simply repeat what students already know or deliver something ready for them. Put students to play educational games or do searches on Google. The school has to overcome the students.
Or get them to outdo themselves when it comes to using the Internet. Students have to learn to discern a reliable source of information in the midst of so much false information that circulates on the Internet, they have to learn to interpret messages on social networks according to the source, they have to know that everything they do on the Internet is registered, that it is being followed at every click, that companies keep this information about us and end up knowing us better than our best friends. They have to know that our browsing history determines what appears to us in searches and on social networks.
They have to learn to protect themselves so as not to be bullied or harassed. So, it goes from text interpretation to an ethical, political and even philosophical discussion of the Internet. One of the great challenges that schools have in relation to new technologies is to make students not only users, but producers of technology.
They have to learn to transform what they have at hand and not be satisfied with the role of passive consumers of applications made by other people, and generally made to stimulate consumption. Technology is a language and students need to learn the codes of that language. Young people cannot be hostages of a language they do not master.
There is a great international movement in education understanding that, already today, but more intensely in the near future, those who do not know programming principles will be considered illiterate. There's even a term for it: "illiterate". Computers occupied an entire floor of a building.
Today they fit in our pocket. Our smartphone is more powerful than the computer that managed the trip of man to the moon in 1969. The tendency is that in the near future computers will be smaller than a cell.
And they will be everywhere. It already has a name for it: Internet of all things, which is already in full development, and the principle of singularity, elaborated by Ray Kurzweil, which is based on this exponential logic of technological advancement. So, if today's young people don't know the basic principles of that language or those codes that will program the computers that already manage our lives and will literally be incorporated into us, that shows that education has completely failed.
It's not what students have to do reinforcement in computer classes. But the technologies have to be present in the daily life of the disciplines. But then teachers ask themselves: how am I going to do this if my students know how to deal with technology better than I do?
And the answer is simpler than it seems. Teachers have to have the courage to learn from their students. But it is not imitating students.
Repeat what they do. Teachers and students must learn together to overcome this passive use together and discover together how to interfere creatively to produce new knowledge from this language. If we learn the alphabet to learn to write and create from language, the same thing must happen with technology.
The meaning of learning the technological language is to use this language to create. And that, for me, is the big question.
