Four little observations:

This month, I have been told a couple of little stories by people I trust:

1. A teacher has to tabulate some student results, so she draws some lines with a ruler on a blank piece of paper, and writes all the results down by hand, taking a couple of hours over the task.

2. A girl on a school art trip to a famous museum asks her friend where she found the fabulous jewel she had drawn. The friend replied, ‘here.’ The girl looks around and can’t see any jewels nearby. She asks again, and the friend explains that she was drawing it from the computer screen right next to her.

(I must point out that neither of the above have any connection to the school where I work).

3. This month, I have also seen how computer technology can literally revolutionise the teaching of music, because five or six bands can practice in near silence in the same music room using electronic instruments connected to computers.

4. Also this month, I have made a huge improvement to an old paper aeroplane design of mine, described in an earlier post. It was such a success, that I decided to write a small book about it. I was able to write, illustrate, design and publish the book within approximately three weeks of deciding to do so.

 

Each of these four observations is relevant to the idea of paradigms in the use or misuse of technology, and how they do or don’t shift. In the case of the teacher drawing the table, it was simply the case that she was unaware of the solutions available in word processing and spreadsheet applications, which would have saved her hours of time. Unless the user has the skills or knowledge to apply computer technology, the computer may as well be there to illustrate a school brochure.

In the second case, the student was perfectly familiar with the technology, to the extent that she chose to use draw the computer display (with its single point of view, low colour fidelity, low resolution, etc) in preference to drawing the real object that was actually on display somewhere in the same gallery. Here we see the skills and the technology interacting perfectly to produce an inferior result.

The use of computers in teaching music is a clear example of what happens when an enthusiastic teacher works in a subject where a number of problems found superb solutions in computer technology: performance without interference with other performers, need to record performances, need for several performers to be able to interact and hear each other without others hearing, etc. The impact of the technology was to make previously impossible things easy.

My own example is there because this is my blog and I’ll talk about it if I want to. More seriously, I just wanted to record how two paradigm shifts occurred for me, all at once- first I realised that a paper aeroplane that I (along with most of the enthusiasts in the field) thought was near optimum turned out to be capable of significant improvement by further simplification. Thirty years of complacency was shattered with a single flight of a new design. And secondly that the new technology allowed me to do something that would have been utterly impossible before- to create a published book and sell it in three weeks.

Here are the requirements for paradigm shifting using computer technology:

1. There must be a need; a problem in search of a solution; a thing that can be improved.

2. The technology must be used by people who have the appropriate skills.

3. The technology must actually be appropriate to the problem.

4. Finally, and most importantly, the user must be able to accept (if true) that the old way was not as good as the new way.

So, the teacher had a problem- tabulation- which is perfect for a computer solution, and the technology was already available. Unfortunately, she hadn’t the skills to implement the obvious paradigm shift.

The student in the museum had a problem- to draw an object- to which the computer technology was completely irrelevant, but because she had the skills she actually used the technology, so the technology had a negative impact (because a computer display is no substitute for the real thing, and the real thing was the point of the school taking her to the museum).

The music class had the perfect climate for a paradigm shift- real problems, problems that were actually addressed by the technology, and a teacher with the skills to implement the change. Music teaching will never be the same again, and it will be better because of the technology.

In the case of my book, the newfangled publishing process is not the real point I’m making. Yes, it’s true that when you think about it, it’s quite amazing that it’s possible to completely bypass a publishing company and have your book sold and delivered all over the world, and to do this in your spare time in three weeks. That is a paradigm shift in the publishing world, and it is technology that makes it possible, and it could only be done because I had all the knowledge required to make it happen. But I think the other thing was more important. When I thought that I had invented the best paper aeroplane in the world, and have had have that view unchallenged for thirty years, it takes the best of scientific training to be able to say, ‘I could be wrong’. That thought is the pre-requisite for doing something better. And I think that’s the most important step to a paradigm shift.

We need to keep these things in mind as we think about new technology doing wonderful things in the new school. There is no guarantee that computers make things better. There is no guarantee that things will change dramatically for the better. But we could do worse than to target areas where we see problems that technology can actually solve, and to work with teachers who have the necessary skills, and the humility to admit the possibility of change.