Maybe Less Tech in Math and School?
I’m sipping hot sake while waiting for my food. I scan the restaurant, about half full already for an early Friday evening. Two kids are on their smartphones at the table with their parents. They don’t even look up as the waiter arrives to take their orders; I guess the parents already know what to order for them. At the next table, I see a young child sitting in his high chair and watching a video on a propped up smartphone. Nearly every kid in the restaurant is doing something on his/her phone. Never mind the adults.
This scene is all too familiar, too common — so common that it would be “odd” if we didn’t see this. And we’ve been seeing it for some time now.
I embrace technology like it’s the softest fluffiest stuffed animal. I need my laptop and cell phone — every goddamn thing is on them. (I still need a real book to read from, however, like this one that just came in the mail because the Internet said I should read it.)
But the restaurant scene is particularly jarring to me because I’ve always valued meal times as sacred, a time to say grace and connect, a time for storytelling, a time for pause and reflection. Dinner time is a time to be social. Ironically, our children are silent at the dinner table because they are on social media with 600 of their best friends. I’ve seen kids with earbuds on too while dining out with the family.
If children are plugged in at dinner time, then I’m going to assume that they are plugged in most of the time at home. This makes me wonder if schools should embrace less technology. I witness that we have over-digitalized everything, not because there was a critical consumer-ish need for it, but because we felt the weird need to do so. Recently, I tweeted this and meant every character.
At BTSA mentor training, 1 of the prompts was "How do u incorporate tech into a lesson?" My knee-jerk response, "You don't." It's back to that tech for tech’s sake that irks me. It's like asking, "How do u add aspirin into your diet?" #ButIDoNotHaveAHeadache @ddmeyer
— Fawn Nguyen (@fawnpnguyen) March 10, 2018
We have an incredible privilege to reach our students in the space and time that we have them. I want them talking and interacting more than anything! Learning mathematics is a social endeavor. Here’s my perennial classroom routine, “Turn and talk with your neighbor.” I want to bring back the arts of speaking and listening, reading and writing, debating and presenting. Last week, Jennifer Wilson (you’re missing out if you haven’t heard Jennifer speak in person) wrote about how time is needed to develop MP3 in our students, “It takes time to determine the conditions for truth.”
I’m happy and grateful that technology is here to stay. But I hope we seek opportunities to connect more humanly.