“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Steve Jobs
How do you view the future of low-tech tools such as desktop publishing software, and is there a worthwhile space for publishing tools in today’s curriculum?
This would have been an easy question, if it weren’t for the word “future“. Pondering what the future of education and the use of low-tech tools may be is an exercise in analyzing complicated concurrent events!
Let’s look at the low-tech desktop publishing software individually. The innovation of software is the ease in which anyone can access it – for free – through Web 2.0 websites. The power of Web 1.0 was commerce. The power of Web 2.0 is people. Empowering people to connect, communicate, and create information is the strength of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 websites crop up in beta formats with the direct desire to create a tool that will work for the people who desire to use it. Innovation of the tool is styled by everyday people with everyday purposes. These purposes lean heavily toward applications for the business world. Check out the Web 2.0 Summit 2008 website and note how much of the summit is geared toward educational interests. Nada. The future of software technology is definitely not low-tech desktop publishing software. Not for business. But, what about education?
The Web 2.0 Summit 2008 is narrowing its focus this year to this question, “How can the web, its technologies, its values, and its culture be tapped to address pressing opportunities?” This question is based on the assumption that complex systems are reaching their limits. Complex systems like: financial markets, healthcare, religious wars. From harnessing collective intelligence to a bias toward open systems – worldwide issues could approach solution through innovative Web 2.0 social movements.
How far away from understanding the value and essential nature of digital information can the United States educational system be? While our “complex system” discusses how to integrate technology within strict guidelines, control, and restraint – the world is opening up. The question becomes, “As a complex system has education as we know it reached its limit? “
David Warlick, posed this question to NECC 2008 attendees, “What do you believe are the fundamental disruptive conditions that are demanding a new kind of educational institution?” Two interesting responses follow:
From Lee Kobert: “This may be politically incorrect, but I believe the compulsion to be politically correct in every area, really shortchanges the kids. The desire to avoid conflict, and perhaps litigation, at all cost in our schools has caused us to do bizarre things in the name of “increasing graduation rates” or “protecting the feelings” of our children. For example, we’ve removed playground equipment and snuffed out recess from the elementary school day, banned awards ceremonies because not everyone gets an award, locked down Internet sites based on a single parent’s complaint, changed the content of history books and give extra credit for bringing in cans of food for food drives. The top-down pressure has caused our creative teachers to cower in the corners of their classrooms, waiting for the door to close so they can teach away from the worksheets and #2 bubble forms. I imagine an education institution where project-based learning and the whole student is allowed on the educational playground, even if he/she may get a bruised knee!
And this from Barbara Jansen:
“Another disruptive condition is the prevalence of technology in the workplace–not just using Microsoft Word, but using technology to solve problems and redefine the traditional ways of doing business, from conducting research to communicating with clients. Traditional administrators and teachers (those who still teach the way they learned in high school and college in the 1950s-mid 90s) sometimes have a difficult time seeing a need for, and identifying how 21st century skills fit into their curriculum so that we can prepare students for success in the workplace. State educational learning standards are far behind the real world. It can take ten or more years for a state to update standards, then many more for them to actually filter down into the curriculum that is actually taught. How can we expedite this process?”
If we believe that desktop publishing as we know it, is a thing of the past for the business world, can it still have significance for education? And, better still – should it?
The answer lies in your fundamental beliefs about education. Is “good enough” enough? Is what is easy, the best? Is teaching to the test, education? I think China answered a resounding, “No!” to “all of the above” when they procured an e-learning deal with the UK. From the BBC, “Education and training are increasingly being seen as an important export market – with a report last week claiming that it was earning more for the UK economy than financial services or the car industry.” The United Kingdom’s innovative e-learning techniques have rendered them a leader – and the United States – a follower. Our educational systems recreate the wheel in each individual state – we do not collaborate between states to create a collaborated curriculum – how can we merge into collaboration with the world?
So then, is there a space for publishing tools in today’s curriculum. Yes. Students must learn how to publish their thoughts into dynamic presentations that may include: newsletters, magazines, flyers, and brochures. The digital formats that desktop publishing allows can introduce students to the Internet as “information provider” platform (Web 1.0). Our need for present day desktop publishing amplifies our loss of opportunity to collaborate with others in Web 2.0 applications.
I leave you with this, “How can the web, its technologies, its values, and its culture be tapped to address pressing opportunities in education?” The answer lies among the collaborative technologies of Web 2.0. Perhaps we should be on the invitation list for Web 2.0 Summit 2008 for our students’ sake.
2 Comments
July 3, 2008 at 2:32 am
Wow LC-
I am not sure where to begin after this amazing and thought provoking post. Your writing, as always, is remarkable. I can see you becoming a voice that others flock to in this blogosphere of ours. I hope you continue in this, it would be a horrible shame to lose that voice.
As for your comments about DTP, the focus of this past week in our course, I am honestly not sure where that fits within your larger comments about the future of other technologies. Our question attempted to have you weigh the new and emerging tools you’ve been spending months on getting to know against this “old” or “classic” tool. Your comments seem to say that you see Web 2.0 as a great possibility for the educational community but where does that leave DTP? Is it still a possibility? Especially when many of your classmates spoke about not having real DTP tools at their disposal. 2.0 is largely free correct? Can you see school officials spending money on an old technology when new largely means free?
You mentioned “Students must learn how to publish their thoughts into dynamic presentations…” which really means 2.0 to me. How can DTP be considered “dynamic?” After devoting such an amazing post to the possibilities of web 2.0, do you see the realities of DTP to be counter to all that you espouse for Web 2.0? The power of 2.0 is to publish, electronically and instantaneously to a huge audience. How does that relate to DTP? Old school vs. new school – do you see old school finding, or keeping, its place?
July 6, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Hi Scott,
What concerns me is our institutions’ seeming complacency with being “good enough” in areas like integrating technology into teaching and learning. While at the same time, we lament math and reading scores that by and large are taught with old-school practices. We acknowledge that education functions years behind business in the acquisition and effective use of technology tools. And, we seem OK with that – in fact we kind of embrace our backwardness as being “just the way things are in education”. Except, there is a fatal flaw in our thinking. Business needs its future employees to be ready to navigate in the global economy. And, global business in the United States will not be dependent upon selection of prime candidates on US soil only. A global economy includes filling positions globally as well. (Is anyone nervous that our own positions may one day be out-sourced?) In the past, our reasoning was based in the expense of each new technology tool or application. With Web 2.0, cost is no longer a factor – now our reasoning swirls around safety. I wonder whether our students would be using these tools more ethically, effectively, and for educational rather than purely recreational purposes if we taught them how to use them for real-world applications and encouraged them to think creatively.
That said, I do sadly think that DTP has a place in our school system – today. Our students need to know how to display, share, and post information. They can use DTP to create and then post their information into web pages, or school-restricted blogs and wikis. They can discuss amongst themselves what they think.
My question remains, “Is this good enough?” And, “How can the web, its technologies, its values, be tapped to address pressing opportunities in education?” What I wonder is why leaders in education aren’t part of the Web 2.0 Summit 2008? I think we have to stop business as usual and pick up our heads and look around. Where are we? Where do we need to be? Why are we stuck lamenting our students’ ability to read and do math while other countries are embracing the future of education and preparing for it…leading toward it? How did we become a follower in education? Why aren’t we concerned?
DTP has a place in our educational system today. Perhaps, one day, our system will refuse to purchase software that can be accessed free on the web. But by then, there will be something much newer and possibly more important that we should be considering and challenging ourselves and our students to use?