A critical examination of the technology in our lives Kevin Shindel

today I’d like to talk to you about what

I believe is a critical need that’s not

being addressed in our classrooms and

that’s the need to fundamentally and

critically explore the role of

technology and the role that technology

plays in our lives so let’s begin with

looking at Google glass just last week

Google announced that Google glass will

be available to everybody next year and

I think this raises fundamental

questions about anonymity and privacy

you can imagine if not today certainly

very soon in the future where Google

glass could interface with Google’s face

recognition software an image

recognition software would we be able to

zoom in to conversations from long

distances could we interface that

conversation that we zoom in with with

lip-reading software so what mechanism

exists to fundamentally ask these

questions about is Google glass a

valuable product how will it change our

sensory perception and our cognitive

function you could ask the question will

it enhance those things or could it

replace them altogether so we have

fundamental questions that we must ask

and for that we may look at a guy by the

name of Ray Kurzweil famous futurist and

author and inventor and his development

of the law of accelerating returns and

what he says is that technological

growth is exponential one invention does

not lead to two inventions which does

not lead to two for inventions one

invention leads to five which leads to

30 which leads to 100 and along the

lines of the next 100 years of

technological growth and change will be

not 100 years of progress but more along

the lines of twenty thousand years of

human progress now let’s say mr.

Kurzweil is is a hundred percent wrong

and there’s only 10,000 years of

scientific progress does that mean that

we also have ten thousand years of

social change economic change political

change and where is the mechanism in our

schools to fundamentally question these

changes and and what these changes can

can bring let’s take a quick look at 3d

printing what’s being called the Second

Industrial Revolution what does it mean

when I can take my neighbor’s shoes that

I like and throw them in a 3d printer

that I can currently buy for less than

$2,000 and I can replicate those shoes

what effect does that have on copyright

and

in the United States there’s a website

called def CAD org and def CAD org you

can literally download dozens of plans

for guns and since December deaf CAD org

has downloaded has had two hundred and

fifty thousand downloads they currently

have three thousand new hits every

single hour so we have people in our in

the halls of Congress debating gun

control gun control could be a mute

issue is simply because of 3d printing

we’re currently being told that the

first person to live to 150 years old is

alive today and the premier scientist

who’s working in anti-aging and

immortality says with near certainty

that the first person to live to 1,000

will be born in the next two decades now

this raises incredible questions and you

can obviously see what this might do to

population growth on the planet can we

sustain longer lives and greater numbers

of people

what does retirement mean when you’re

living to 150 or 200 years old what

about family life if I live to 150 does

my 120 year old son come to me and ask

me for fatherly advice science there’s

been a major push across all levels for

stem science technology engineering and

math and I’m not denigrating that and

I’m not saying that there’s nothing

intrinsically wrong about a stem push we

need scientifically literate students

but the way that has traditionally

happened in the schools is we’ve given

them more time we’re given them more

quantity and not necessarily better

quality and that’s an issue science

should be about doing but we don’t do

that in our classroom so what we say is

let’s give them more time to learn

science and technology and engineering

and math and when you do that without

unlimited time you marginalize the other

aspects of school that make that make

school enriching and that’s what this is

really all about is value and the

science classrooms that we currently

have they’re not interested necessarily

in value they’re interested in fact what

do we know and what do we don’t know

technology is interested in what can we

do and what can we not do and and to get

to a different set of questions the

critical inquiry into technology you

have to rely on social studies just

because you can

do something does not mean that you

should do something and just because

that you can’t do something does not

mean that you should try there are

critical questions that we must ask of

Technology critical questions of ethics

morality society political questions and

these are best served in a social

studies classroom for the last three

years my students have engaged in a

digital downtime project phase one

requires those students to record and

describe the nature of all of their

communication and all the time that they

spend online all their text messaging

all their talking all their video gaming

and they get a really nice picture of

how much time they actually spend with

these technologies and I can’t tell you

how many times I hear the I did this

come up

Shandell you know I got on Facebook last

night and I only wanted to get on there

for five minutes and then I looked up

and it was 45 minutes later and I say

yeah that happens I said no that

happened to me yesterday three different

times so these kids they understand that

they need to take a look at their use of

technology and the role that technology

plays in their lives and there’s

literally too many things to talk about

in class so they go home and they talk

about these at the dinner table and I

often get parents with email me and some

parents will say you know what this is a

great project and our whole house is

going to do it we’re all going to look

at the usage of our technology and

analyze it and then you get to phase two

of the project and phase two of the

project requires the students to unplug

there is no cell phone texting there is

no cell phone talking there’s no social

networking there’s no video gaming and

and they really have to live as best

they can without technology and then you

go to the final part of the project and

this is where students can organize

themselves self-organization into groups

or individually and they create

authentic assessment opportunities and

they can apply what they’ve learned in

all of our discussions and in all of

their notes to some kind of overall goal

one of those things could be joining an

organization they could partner with

civic or and local and political

organizations and people to develop

strategies to take a look at the use of

technology and technological policies

creative students poets I’ve seen some

great Poe

written about the use of technology and

the impact that it has on ourselves or

on our society this is bigger than a

test it’s more powerful than a test to

take a test you would reduce what we’ve

done in this unit and how modernize it

as a simple fact-finding endeavor that’s

not what we’re looking for we’re not

looking to regurgitate facts we’re

looking to find value in life and the

only way to do that is through a

passionate commitment and engagement of

the questions that make life beautiful

and meaningful and valuable thank you