The technology revolution..

AS I sit down and try to to digest all the great presentations and discussions from the TIE Conference, I am pondering where does the revolution go from here.

Having taught my whole career with computers and some sort of technology I can't help but think back to the beginning...my first year was 1999.  Students quickly showed me their new web tool, Napster.  Being located in a small, very rural school, this opened up music from everywhere.  The computer had no filters, so students quickly leveraged the schools technology to create many a mix CD.  Than we all got wise to the ethics of the situation and moved on.  The revolution had started, students understood the technology better than teachers and for the masses teachers would never catch up again.

Fourteen years later and where is the revolution at today. Richard Byrne, of blogging fame http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ gave the closing keynote at the conference today in South Dakota.  In it, he referenced not liking the "revolution" term. As the five hour drive home meandered on, I wondered about this educational technology revolution that has been on going for at least fourteen years.  The social studies teacher in me started thinking that the technology component might be better compared to a gorilla warfare situation. Now I know that the "Educational Gorilla War" doesn't make for as nice, clean headlines but sometimes the truth is messy.

So lets think about the gorilla methodology.   Attack at random times to try to cause chaos and inflict as much damage as we can.  Computers, projectors, Laptops, Internet, Elmo, Smart/Interactive boards, Ipods, Cell Phones, Ipads, Chromebooks, Kindle, Ipad mini....and the ammunition list could be much more detailed but I think we start to see.  The next wave always put schools behind and teachers left trying to get caught up. 

Can education win the "gorilla war"? I think as long as we buy into the next great revolutionary product we may never.  If we really start to to de-gadgetize education and get technology truly blended into the fiber of the learning environment than, no matter whats next(google glass, google contacts...) schools will be in front of the curve and the random deployments will be much more beneficial for our students future.