The Taming of Technology
Americans are obsessed with technology, and in general it has really helped us out. The industrial revolution truly solidified the US as one of the leading superpowers in the world and the ensuing technology advances pushed us further and further. Technology is definitely a good thing. It also has its down sides.
Some people find that it can be daunting to learn how to do new tasks or learn new computer systems or pieces of hardware. It can be very expensive and really exposes a gap in between rich and poor. One of the biggest concerns I have about it, however, is that it can be addictive. People can become technology addicts and constantly trying to have the most state of the art systems and features. A warning to those, unless you are either really rich or make the stuff, you’re probably never going to be cutting edge.
Something that I hadn’t thought about struck me last night: schools can be technology addicts too. In modern times of one-upmanship the easiest thing for a school to do to show that it is better than another is to buy newer and better hardware and software than any other school. Wireless internet across the entire campus, ethernet plugs in the bathroom stalls, a laptop for every student, SMART boards in the classroom, etc…
This came up as Torch was telling me that the school district that he works for is purchasing SMART boards for almost all the high school classrooms in the district, and projectors for all the middle schools. Torch is a high school biology teacher in case you didn’t know. If you don’t know what a SMART board is, here is a rather nice wiki article explaining it. I don’t deny the fact that it will have practical applications and can be helpful in the classroom. In fact in some classrooms it might be really nice, but many of the features that he said he would use it for could be covered by a projector and a computer. It won’t be as nice or as fancy, but it would be about as effective.
The problem that this creates is that I have visited his school, and I have visited high schools all across the country. There are greater needs to the infrastructure of the schools in America than advancing technology. Peeling paint, broken windows, chipped tiles in the floor, desks that are mostly destroyed, classrooms that are too small, not enough classrooms (Torch actually is in a different room every hour because he doesn’t have his own room), and so on. His biggest concern about his school was that there wasn’t air conditioning in most of the building. Most students are sweating their way through school and miserable. I would say that paying teachers more would be the most pertinent issue, but this money comes from the SILO tax which has to be used on infrastructure improvements.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up that this is a great source of pride for me about Cornell. Cornell has long avoided the temptation of making sexy upgrades to its campus at the cost of areas of greater needs. A lot of times it would be easy to spend several million dollars on some flagship residence hall, sports facility, or academic building that would be the focal point of the campus tour and impress all that came. If you do that though, once you get there, you find that all the other buildings are suffering from deferred maintenance. We have always planned out well what new improvement or project is the most important and gone after it and maintained the rest of the campus well. You may not find SMART boards in our classrooms, but at least the place looks nice, and won’t fall down around you.
After 2 years, I’m starting to struggle with the video posts. I’m going to go ahead and post a video of a message from the president. He’s one of the people making all those good decisions, so I thought I would give him some face time (or really lack thereof if no one reads this)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-GApjmmvvQ&feature=channel_page
April 6th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I thought you meant Obama was making all the good decisions. Then I thought, no way he could mean that.