Was searching through email for an old contact and was reminded of this article from Rethinking Schools in 2008: “The Laptops are coming! The Laptops are coming!” It was written by someone I know … so I read it again. And … uh … the more things change… rethinkingschools.org/articles/the... - ThreadSky

jessenathaniel.bsky.social • 3 days ago

Was searching through email for an old contact and was reminded of this article from Rethinking Schools in 2008:

“The Laptops are coming! The Laptops are coming!”

It was written by someone I know … so I read it again. And … uh … the more things change…

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-laptops-are-coming-the-laptops-are-coming/

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jessenathaniel.bsky.social•3 days ago

Any of these concerns look familiar to anyone?

jessenathaniel.bsky.social•3 days ago

To be clear, I was already well-aware of our ongoing technology fetish — my first job in a school was as a computer lab director. But what’s particularly striking is how similar the underlying concerns are: tech implementation necessitated a move away from the human aspects of education.

jessenathaniel.bsky.social•3 days ago

Schooling has gotten increasingly transactional for decades for numerous reasons (that others have detailed well); tech has only intensified that — as schools have faced more and more pressure from various directions, the focus on speed and efficiency of information flows & “content” continues.

jessenathaniel.bsky.social•3 days ago

Back in 2008 — in response to LAPTOPS — McFarlane begs a question that was as simple as it was prescient: why are we not more carefully and patiently weighing the cost and benefits of this thing we’re spending so much time on? Why are we in such a rush to embrace technology?

jessenathaniel.bsky.social•3 days ago

17 years later, as tech has become ubiquitous in schools and a pandemic forced its embrace upon us, people are saying, “You can save time with AI!”

*Here’s more tech to make it easier to use the tech that you adopted before!*

And we’ve been in free fall down this spiral rabbit hole for decades.

jessenathaniel.bsky.social•3 days ago

I don’t have any good answers to this even though I began my career as “the tech guy”…but this question from that 2008 article is going to ring in my head for a while: we all see what’s happening here, but do we see a problem with it? And do we laugh off the question or slow down to think about it?

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