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