I don’t often have time to listen to the radio during the afternoon, but today, I caught the last few minutes of “The start of social media’s legal reckoning” on 1A which I listened to on Vermont Public’s radio broadcast.
I only caught the tail end of the commentary, but one of the guests made a point that struck me as a very profound statement on the nature of educational technology. To paraphrase: Social media companies are businesses that make more money when people use them more.
The guest suggested we include that in conversations with young people about their social media and technology use. My mind immediately went to my field: I work in educational technology. It is my job to encourage educators to use information technology in meaningful ways. I feel confident in my abilities to do that; take a look at this blog and you will see what I believe to be sound advice, grounded in theory, and refined with practice.
This comment on the radio brought me back to an episode in about 2015. A colleague was encouraging me to enroll in a course to become a “Google certified” educator. My response was I did not think I needed Google to tell me how to do my job. She was not impressed with my response. I have thought about that on occasion in the 10 years or so since, and occasionally I post on Blue Sky or Mastodon how we don’t need technology companies to certify our educators, but this comment on the radio resonated with me in a way that message has not previously.
Perhaps it is because I hear middle school educators (the group of k-12 educators which whom I have the deepest connection) talking about things that are doing to get students to reconnect with other humans. Perhaps it is because of the dominance of AI in students’ work. Perhaps it is because we need to disconnect from information and reconnect with concepts (something that has been true for decades).
Early in my career in educational technology (after a decade of teaching science and math), we were all very concerned about “how to get computers in the hands of students.” We were not thinking about what to do when we got there. We have been there for about a decade, and in that time, we have allowed Google, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, IBM, Meta, Amazon Web Services, and others to develop “educator” programs.
As educators, we can get certified to teach with those products. Products that can damage young brains if we are not extremely careful.
Stop. Read that last paragraph again.
What are we doing?