As long as I can remember, futurists have been making predictions about the great teaching machine. The great teaching machine was going to transform education by allowing each and every student to have his or her own curriculum and proceed at his or her own pace. Hasn't happened yet. Probably won't.
There may never be a great teaching machine. But computers and kids are transforming our schools even while you're reading this piece.
The kids are what people in the computer business call "lead users." The ways that they use equipment today tells us a little bit about how we all will be using equipment in the years ahead. So, take a trip with me now down to a local school and let's see what we can discover about our future.
Let's stop outside and look around. There are backpacks everywhere. I don't think I ever saw anyone with a backpack going to the Bronx High School of Science when I went there. There were several kids who carried briefcases, and the rest of us tended to make fun of them. My personal choice was to carry a clipboard and one book. I thought I was seriously "cool."
Today's kids, though, have backpacks, and those backpacks are stuffed with gear. There's almost certainly a wireless phone. Staying connected is really important. There might be a laptop computer if the child comes from a more affluent household or happens to be the beneficiary of one of the programs out there that provides laptops for students.
There's probably some other electronic gear, too. There are certainly game playing devices and there are all kinds of books stuffed in that backpack. Some backpacks are so heavy that there are now articles in medical journals about the effect that they have on kids' spines.
Those backpacks are heavy because kids want to have everything with them. They think that "portable is powerful." Portability confers a kind of freedom.
If your gear is portable, you can do whatever you do from wherever you are. If you've got your laptop, you can find a corner of the library or the schoolyard and work on your paper. You don't have to be at home.
Portability gives you flexibility, too. In my day, when we were going to get together, we'd spend lots of time calling around and setting up the exact time and place when we would meet. Kids today don't do it that way.
What they do instead is agree at an approximate time to get together. When that time comes they start calling each other. Then, on the fly, they work out where they are going to meet and what they are going to do.
Portability can also make you more effective. Kids who participate in programs like the one in Maine that gives laptop computers to all middle school students, have found that being able to take their computer out of the school makes them more productive and helps them learn better.
That's part of the bigger principle about how the Net brings different worlds together. Just to take one example, if your son or daughter is working on a history paper and has a computer at home, he or she can check out a number of great history sites on the Web and pull information together from several sources. That used to take several trips to the library.
Being connected to the Net lets students download information from all over. That's part of what fuels the online music craze. Kids think nothing about downloading music from the Net. Soon many of the rest of us won't either.
Being connected with the Net also means that you're connected to information about the school. In the old days, if you were sick or cut school, you'd have to make several phone calls to find out what the assignments were and get appropriate notes. Today, for many students, that's a thing of the past.
What they're doing is signing on to the Net and finding the Web site for a particular teacher, or course. There they can grab text materials, find out what the assignments are, and even follow links designed to help with an assignment.
Other students catch up or clarify assignments is by sending an email to the teacher. But watch out, kids, that much connectivity can work against you.
More and more schools are making it possible for parents and other interested adults to find out exactly what's going on in school. Simple email to a teacher is one way to do that. Visiting a school or class Web site is another.
In many places, parents can sign on and find out exactly how their child is doing. They might be able to find out what classes he or she has missed, and when. They can find out about grades and assignments.
The key to making all of this work turns out to be the teacher. What a surprise! Just like before the Net.
If the teacher is both qualified and interested, connecting to the Net can be a powerful force for learning, but also for the entire school experience. And having the Net as part of the school experience means that old excuses often take on new forms.
As long as there have been kids in school, there have been excuses for why homework didn't get done. We've all heard the one about, "The dog ate my homework." That one probably won't work, but teachers report that they are getting an awful lot of, "I couldn't print my assignment because the printer was broken."
What happens with the Net is that the Net allows the worlds of the school and the home and the neighborhood to come together. Pretty soon what used to stay at school finds its way home. That includes good things like information and bad things like bullying.
In those pre-computer days if you were the kid that everybody picked on, your discomfort was often limited to what happened at school. When you got home, you were in your own world.
But now, you might connect to the Net and find some of those same taunts and some of that some ridicule right there online. Even worse, that stuff that makes your stomach knot up won't only be there for you to see. It might be there for everybody in the world to see.
Okay, then, what are the lessons we can learn by observing the connected world of school, and kids, and home. The first lesson, I think, is that technology changes how we work.
Having information available at your fingertips on the Net, and being connected to the world of information and the world of your friends all the time, gives you greater flexibility and less need to lay out detailed advance plans or to be in a special place in order to work. You can coordinate, grab information and make connections on the fly.
The second lesson is that human factors don't change just because we're connected. There are still bullies and excuses and all the other human parts of school and life. One important lesson we can learn from watching our kids at school is that in most work settings, there is a critical person who has a disproportionate impact on our experience and the quality of our work.
In school, that person is the teacher. At work, it's usually the first-line supervisor, your immediate boss. What that person does, and what that person thinks is important, and what that person wants to spend time on become the ground rules and guidelines for life.
Finally, the big lesson watching the kids at school in the Digital Age is that we don't get less human when we get more connected. All of those same insecurities and worries that make adolescence so tough are still there in the Digital Age.
The computers and the network might modify them or deflect them or defer them, but ultimately our basic humanity is what drives our lives. Take away the technology and a good teacher can make learning happen. But take away the teacher and the passion and the technology is just gear.
