Education Technology Powered By Students

Thursday, July 23rd 2009 by Joe CorbettcloseAuthor: Joe Corbett Name: Joseph Corbett
Email: joe@istrategylabs.com
Site: http://www.istrategylabs.com/
About: Joe is the COO of iStrategyLabs, and his focus is on creating perfect digital/physical execution for clients and the lab itself. Being charged with keeping the lab operating efficiently 24/7 demands that Joe knows how to solve problems in 100 different ways, but he prides himself on finding the elegant solution that most satisfies each job. He has been deeply immersed in the web since the age of 10, and started his first tech business at age 16. Joe’s true passion is studying human behavior and technology’s influence on it. You can tweet him @joecorbettSee Authors Posts (53)

Terms like “Web 2.0” and “Social Media” are thrown around a lot these days to highlight concepts in technology that many of us find new and exciting. You would be hard pressed to find a group of people, especially educators, that would all agree on what the definitions of these terms are. This is because they mean different things to each of us. For me, these terms are all about people; more specifically, people that power technology. Pre-web 2.0 and social media, computing was viewed as sterile and the opposite of what we consider to be human. Now however, new technologies often mirror our behaviors and many web 2.0 technologies require a human to power it and make it relevant.

This concept raises an important questions in educational technology: If we view technology as a human affair, then which humans are best equipped to power the future of educational technology? If there is something I have learned about web 2.0 technologies, it’s that you should always allow the end user to provide the direction, insight, and overall effort necessary to meet a given challenge. In this case, the end user we need to challenge are the students. If you think this challenge is too great for our children, or that adults are the answer, then check out this interview I did at NECC 2009 with a group of students that were presenting how to teach teachers about educational technology. (starts out choppy but improves.)

This might be asking too much of the ed tech community, but I think we should start looking at how we can move away from only teaching students how to use ed tech tools, and give them some guidance on how they can create their own. I’m not suggesting we start teaching our students php and java in kindergarten, although I wish we could, but I suggest we prepare them for the next iteration of the web which is going to be all about building digital tools exactly the way you want them. We can at least start by asking our students to come up with the concepts for educational technology tools, which we can then hand-off to talented developers in our own local communities. You might even be able to find developers willing to come into the classroom to talk a little bit about how tech concepts become a reality. So the next time you have a moment in the classroom to talk about tech, ask your students what they’d like to see happen in the future, and give them some information on how they can help make their ideas become a reality.

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