Loving Technology but Ignoring Content

After reading this article from the Washington Post, I can safely say I agree with the sentiment that filling a school with iPads and laptops will not guarantee an improvement in student performance.  The author asserts that the reason students are doing so poorly in schools is that content, or what we're teaching kids and why, is poor and that giving schools money for technology improves nothing.  Content needs to be addressed first.  The problem, as the writer points out, is that great technology is easy to measure and fund.  Determining great content can be tricky.  This country is full of exceptional teachers who are just as frustrated as this writer is, and while these teachers may share views on the most effective teaching pedagogies (constructivist learning for example), many will disagree with each other on which content should be used to teach reading, writing and literature, and why this content is important.  Each teacher has his or her own unique teaching goals and objectives.  

We can all agree that American kids are flailing like dying fish on a dock in our schools, and we all want them to stop flailing, focus and just do better.  So when departments of education see a school in a better socio-economic neighborhood rife with technological resources produce better student performance, they assume A directly led to B (more technology directly lead to better performance) and the non-sequitur the writer describes is created.      

Yet taking technology out of the equation is not the solution, and that's what this article suggests.  At least, that's what I got from it.  Yes, content needs to change but we cannot blame technology funding on weak pedagogies and content.  And we should not halt this type of funding either.  Kids need technology in schools; it's important, especially when that technology is used to its best advantage by teachers and staff.  Just as more technology does not lead to better performance, more technology does not necessarily lead to worse performance.  Computers, iPads, smartboards, laptops with photoshop and Microsoft Word can improve learning, it absolutely can.  I wish the writer would acknowledge this.  Even if content remains the same, technology can make a book like "Animal Farm" more accessible and fun for students.  Kids can create artwork based on the book on Photoshop, conduct research for essays on computers, or simply have access to the text itself.  As Kelly Gallagher points out in "Readicide" many, many schools lack this basic resource.  So if a school receives funding to give kids books on iPads or Kindles, I say hallelujah.  At least the kids are getting books.

The problem I therefore have with this article is the writer seems to use technology funding as a scapegoat for weak content in our schools.  Is this true?  Maybe, but I would bet a week's paycheck that one of the real culprits for poor performance and weak content is standardized testing.  We need to reconsider how we measure student performance and how tests are holding kids back.  But that's a whole different conversation, a conversation that unfortunately moves in circles amongst teachers, administrators and the big dogs in DC who make the laws (and, of course, have never stepped foot inside a classroom as an educator.)