Throughout the last 10 years, education has been under a constant barrage of people claiming that technology will change the manner in which teachers teach and how students learn. I remember being a middle school teacher in 2006, during the wiki-blog blitz, and being told that Web 2.0 was a paradigm shift that will usher in a new era of education. Well, it’s 2013 and blogs and wikis have had an impact on education, but they surely have not been the game changer many were claiming them to be. Fast forward to today and the advent of the iPad and mobile technology. Again, educators are being told how these devices are changing the manner in which education conducts the business of teaching and learning. But after rolling out iPads the questions most commonly asked are, “What are the best Apps for…?” or “How do I integrate this into my lessons?” from teachers and administrators alike. This blog post is in no way belittling the (potential) impact an iPad or Web 2.0 tool could have on pedagogy. Rather, I feel that we have “let the proverbial horse out of the barn” with new technologies before first challenging the theoretical-philosophical foundations of teaching and learning that have established over a hundred and twenty years of educational method in classrooms across the country.

In order to usher in a new era of teaching and learning, we as professional educators must first examine the philosophical underpinnings that drives us to teach. If our goal is truly to create critically engaged learners in a collaborative environment, to become critical agents in a democratic society, then how do we take something like an iPad and challenge our pedagogical identities to engage our students in a truly new and unique method of instruction? The answer to this question does not lead to an “App,” “open source website,” or even a computer for that matter, rather it challenges us to look deeper and contextualize our reason for teaching. It is only after such reflection that can we effectively engage with a “tool” to provide the pedagogical bridge to achieve our instructional goals. Our goal should be to look beyond the quick fixes and refocus our sights on truly changing education through the use new technologies. For we mustn’t forget what John Dewey taught us over a hundred years ago “that the educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end: the educational process is one of continual reorganizing, restructuring, transforming.”

It is my contention that in order to shift the education paradigm to meet the needs of the modern student we must re-examine the theoretical orientation of education and re-position it within the concept of communicative readiness to learn. An essential message of this concept is that learning is impossible without taking into account the position of the learner. In other words, learning is not objective activity, rather it can only be achieved when the subjectivity of the learner and the teacher have been taken into account. Without in-depth exploration of the subjective position of the learner the teacher fails to acknowledge her/his own position. This results in the teacher then acting as a controlling agent in that s/he is imposing, albeit most times unknowingly, her/his consciousness on the learner. For me, the iPad and/or an open source website are liberating agents that provide teachers introspective vehicles that are able garnish and reinforce authentic student voice and individual empowerment. For new technologies to shift the entrenched traditional educational paradigm they need to be viewed through the lens of liberation, one that opens the door to students thoughts and perceptions, thereby expanding the communicative readiness of the classroom.This not only leverages the use of the technology in an organic, covert role within the pedagogical structure of the classroom, but shifts the path of knowledge and information communicated in the classroom from that of the teacher to the voice of each individual student.

I recently read that teachers and the structure of schooling may no longer be needed with the advent of new mobile technologies. After all you can take a course from Stanford for free on iTunes U. I could not disagree more. Teachers and schools are not only are needed but are essential in order to challenge traditional forms of pedagogy. It will be these discussions that will reinforce the need to meet students at the crossroads of modern learning if we are to truly engage them in innovative pedagogical strategies in a new era in education. Due to today’s emphasis on test scores and quantitative measures of learning, our teachers are increasingly bound to the bureaucratic nature of traditional schooling through control. Again this completely misses the importance of a communicative learning environment where the emphasis is on engagement with each individual student, thus reinforcing the importance of the teacher-student relationship. Ultimately it is the strength of this relationship that will determine the success of our educational system, not an iPad, blog or wiki.

I am afraid that by releasing the “technology horse” prior to in-depth reflection on teaching and learning, we have created a “educational technology beast” that could very well be impeding the pedagogical potential of new innovative instructional technologies. In essence, the question of what Apps to use only reinforces the bureaucratic nature of instruction. In order for teachers to leverage new technology to liberate student voices it is essential that educators make a constant effort to refuse to be bureaucratized, for it is bureaucracy that annihilates creativity, silences our students, and transforms our teachers into mere repeaters of clichés.

To conclude, I feel education is indeed at a crossroads, one that is not spoken of much in the popular press or Colleges of Education for that matter. If we do not leverage technology in our schools to embolden our students to find their own educational voice we will continue the patchwork of educational reform that aesthetically looks technologically relevant, but has not shifted much since 1900.