The use of technology in classrooms has never been a smooth ride.In 2013 the Los Angeles Unified School District announced a $1 billion initiative to put iPad in every student's hand only to have student's hack the tablet and use it for several non-academic tasks during class time. The Obama administration announced $400 million for companies such as Adobe who will donate their software to schools. And the latest players in the "technology education revolution" are the publishing companies, who are rolling out all digital curriculums. McGraw Hill, a textbook publisher, is partnering with StudySync to offer an all digital English curriculum. The policy makers and companies tout these all digital curriculums as revolutionizing the way education is done. But much like the goal of a computer in every classroom will have much of an impact.
The access to everything 24/7 provides an interesting platform. There is a danger, though, in thinking that technology as it is widely being used in the classroom presents a “revolutionary” shift in education. Founder of Khan Academy, Khan, gave a Ted-ex talk titled let’s revolutionize education through videos. Much of the curriculum is "drill and kill" or lectures packaged with pretty colors.hat is assigned to students through technology, whether in or outside the classroom, is really just lecture. Technology allows students to watch the lectures over and over and does provide an opportunity for students to review what they may have missed, but the information is still just lecture. The problems are still just practice similar to that in textbooks and workbooks.
I haven't seen all the new curriculums, but I've seen enough to know that digitalization does not equal innovation. At their core many online programs are just textbook problems put in a screen version. So lest we overstate what is going on, technology is providing an electronic, accessible way to do education the way it has been done for the past 100 years. It is not revolutionizing education, at best it is tinkering.