High Tech Fence-Sitter

March is shaping up to be technology month. I just finished Clifford Stoll's High Tech Heretic, and now have plenty of brain food for the next few months.

The book is largely outdated, which becomes excessively clear in his laundry list of failed technologies. In the belligerently-named chapter "Arrogance of the Techies," Stoll condemns those who "waste enormous resources by making grandiose predictions," including that "network computers would work without disks by hooking up directly over the Internet" and that "electronic commerce, based on cryptographic payment systems, would bring a whole new model for doing business." Done and done.

So Stoll misses the boat on a few things. A few others, though? I wonder if he is not frighteningly on the mark. He insistently returns to the theme of the varied quality of real-world vs. virtual-world interactions. Although not always explicit, this theme peeks its imaginary head out everywhere in a digerati version of whack-a-mole. The technocrats predict that the web will spawn unity, prosperity, and an ever-larger and ever-more-diverse community. Stoll takes great delight in poking that balloon to siphon off its overblown predictions.

Over a decade after this book's publication, though, I don't think either camp's got it quite right. I worry that this is one more instance of my interminable waffling, but I'll break out the maple syrup and forge ahead anyhow. The forging will be into a cornerstone of Stoll's argument: that computers have no place in education, particularly for young children.

Stoll convincingly lays out a depressing future in which teachers are passé and children interact only with monitors, not each other. To the best of my knowledge, that future has not come about. Computer usage in kindergartens and elementary schools seems to be balanced with an understanding that each room still needs desks, books, art supplies, and teachers. In all fairness, I base this assumption of how-things-are on one particular instance of how-things-were-in-one-instance. I recently participated in Nevada Reading Week by volunteering to read to several classes at a North Las Vegas elementary school. The librarians were beyond helpful, recommending books at the 3^rd and 4^th grade levels for me to read and inquiring after my own favorite childhood books. Armed with their suggestions, I wandered down the hall to the first classroom I was slated to spend time in.

No one was there: the room felt oddly hollow with so much evidence of students, but nary a student in sight. My guide, herself a student, said they must be having computer time, so we toodled around the corner into an extra-wide hallway filled at one side with computer terminals, each partitioned from the other. The teacher seemed ambivalent at my presence, calling the students to group on the floor around the chair where I would read. She gave them no instructions for whatever project or game or lesson they were completing on the computers. Frankly, I have no idea what these students were doing before I arrived, but it felt odd that the computer activity could be so easily interrupted for me, a volunteer who could stand to wait for a good stopping point.

Perhaps it is unfair, but I do wonder what pedagogical purpose the computers played for this 3^rd grade. They were not unduly ruffled at abandoning their workstations, but neither were all of them bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the prospect of sitting quietly and listening to me read at whatever pace I chose. In fact, the only moment during the session that the whole class seemed interested came during our post-reading question-and-answer period. I myself was highly interested in how many of these tots asked about college: what was it like, did I ever get bored of reading, why did I go to college. They were desperate for answers from me, a real life human who had Gone To College. They showed a desperation that simply wasn't there as they sat at their terminals or listened to The Penguin and the Pea.

To cut this long story short, the next class carried a completely different vibe. In this 4^th grade classroom, there were no computers, only desks with students quietly doing their work. The teacher asked them to finish what they were working on, then gather around my undersized reading chair. The students all did so, with a certain--and expected--amount of silliness and feet-dragging. They listened respectfully while I read, and were eager to join in when I proposed an interactive reading involving lots of winking and sound effects. But, just like the previous class, they were most animated when the time for questions arrived. My personal favorite: "Can I go to college and be a professional skateboarder?"

Again, these students were desperate for information. The information they sought wasn't generalized, however, nor was it available in Math Invaders or Word Twist. It was personal, it was experiential, it was responsive to their queries. Like the best storybook, I could give them my point-of-view. Like the best edutainment, I come in multimedia: I operate through sound, picture, language, references. We are our own tiny universes filled with both knowledge and hypertext.

So my take-away message may seem to confirm Stoll's argument that students need live teachers, not web interfaces. But that's not quite where I'd go with my message.

Because my experiences and my answers and my tiny universe was shaped by computers, for good or ill. Computers have given me tools to aid my writing, to increase my pool of potential metaphors, and to showcase my thoughts in this very blog. But just as so much that I could fit into a conversation just won't fit into this blog, everything a student--hell, a person--can learn cannot be contained by a computer or the internet. But then, it can't be contained by a book, either.

Ultimately, I think Stoll focuses far too much on the 'how' question, to the exclusion of 'what.' How did I learn? From books and wide-ranging foreign travel and well-read parents. What did I learn? A lot of things, all of which I'm grateful for.

But here's the ultimate ultimate, the tiny doubt that got me questioning Stoll's argument. What I didn't learn young was computing and how I could have learned it was by having computers around to tinker with. So many of my successful engineering friends talk about playing with computers from a young age. I don't mean playing computer games, I mean playing with computers: their innards, their programs, and their languages. I can only wonder how differently my ill-fated attempt at an engineering education might have turned out with similar childhood experiences. I believe enough in myself and my interests to know that literature would have prevailed in the end. But maybe those engineering courses wouldn't have felt so much like being sucker-punched in the gut.

Computers and internet and technology as the answer? No. Computers and internet and technology given some due for shaping people's lives in positive ways? For sure.