My first experience using computers to teach was in 1993 when I was teaching French at a small, rural school in the Adirondacks. When the US Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York closed, it donated its old computers to regional schools. They were “286s” that basically only ran, well, BASIC! Fascinated, I taught myself BASIC and started writing programs to drill vocabulary and verb conjugations. I really have not stopped coding educational apps since. It turned into a very stimulating hobby and very useful for my teaching practice. (When we were doing remote learning during the pandemic, my students were already operating in a digital classroom and remote learning was easy!)
Those old “IBM Compatible” computers were designed by computer engineers for the business world. The input interface was a keyboard (for typists and secretaries who, in the old days, were the only ones in the office who needed to learn to type). The big, boxy device was designed to sit on an office desk. The software ran programs like simple word processors and spreadsheets. These are also office utilities. You begin to see where I am going here?
Computers like these were initially devised to increase the efficiency of offices. They were for business.
I saw my first computer game at my cousin’s house when I was in middle school. His family had an Atari system. That was also where I first saw coding in BASIC. I saw the early computer game, Pong, at a restaurant when I was in my early teens. And there was Space Invaders at the arcade in Old Forge… And there was an arcade at the Fairmount Fair mall … You begin to see where I am going now?
Computers like those were devised for entertainment. Whether for entertainment or for commerce, the whole paradigm was intended for purposes other than education.
I was computer coordinator in my school at the time when computers and internet first migrated into schools. I was there in the heated discussions over whether we use Mac or IBM. I helped wire our school for internet and networking. I ran cables through crawlspaces and attic spaces in the 70-year old school. Talk was about what kids will need in this computer age and mainly we felt they needed skills associated with business, so when we adopted devices that were primarily designed for offices and plunked them in classrooms we figured it was good. Computer labs were de rigueur in the late 90s and early 00’s. Each classroom in my school had four or five PCs, which we built in a basement workshop. We were running Windows, Microsoft Office, PowerPoint, and so forth. We were trying to bend a device and its software that was designed for business and entertainment to classroom use.
By 2012, smartphones had become ubiquitous among students and this led to a number of other problems. Young people mainly play games and socialize on their devices. Socializing mediated by social media platforms has made changes and caused problems we are only beginning to unravel.
People use digital devices to engage in commerce, participate in entertainment, and to socialize. These being the principle purposes of the devices, they shape the course of design not only of the physical device itself but the software and features that the devices host.
My thesis is that when we brought these devices into schools, right from the beginning, we were trying to repurpose things meant for commerce, entertainment, and socializing into an environment where none of those was our pedagogical purpose. Sometimes it fits, sometimes it does not.
What do apps look like that are devised for education?
I use the phrase “21st Century Learning Spaces” to refer to a digital device and its software that fit education well because it is designed for that purpose and not repurposed from some other setting. I don’t build digital devices, but I do write software. For the past ten years, my colleagues and my students and I have been dissatisfied with bending apps to serve an educational function and having it not quite fit. Every try to use Google Forms to give a quiz? Is that really easier than what we used to do?
I hope you will join me in the next few posts and permit me to unpack the 21st Century Learning Space concept with its implications, limitations, and applications to education. I hope teachers will try out Innovation Assessments and see whether I have managed to meet some of the criteria for educational apps in a 1:1 device classroom.