By Dr. Martin Horejsi
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
—Arthur C. Clarke
As I watched the latest crop of tablet computers graduate from drawing board to Christmas list last year, I was again thrilled to have plenty of choices for use in education. But my standards are high. I expect nothing short of magic from my tablets. I expect them to become invisible, to disappear before my eyes, to melt in my hands.
You see, the tablet is not important; it is what the tablet does that justifies its existence. Tablets are conduits to something else … to somewhere else … to anywhere else. The tablet is capable of doing so many things to such a small extent that if ever we successfully label a technology a tool, and really mean it, the tablet is a worthy recipient.
When a student uses a tablet to read, the experience must be immersive. No, really immersive. Like beyond the cliché. On the stage of education, the electronic device must never expect its role to be more than a supporting actor. To do its job well, the tablet must blend into the background, silently serving up words while hoping desperately to be forgotten. And it must be really happy in that role. Just like when the physical book dissolves away the moment it gets good. Really good. Goosebumps good. You know what I mean.
Yet if the interface of a tablet requires hard touches and multiple swiping attempts—and emits enough alerts, popups, hangs, hiccups and chirps to scare a horse—then the tablet is overshadowing the star of the show, biting the hand that feeds it content. You know the feeling. Like when a great thought is lost with the snap of pencil lead. Or when the crux of the plot is wedged between two stuck pages, now holding hostage three hundred pages of priceless tension.
Watching students, and even my own kids, devour a foot-high stack of Harry Potter, I know they are different people afterward. They have been to a place in their minds where the magic truly is real, and they want nothing more than to plow into another book—damn the big words—full speed ahead!
Literacy is an experience, a feeling of confidence, an acquired dimension that can never be taken away. The books, however, fare far worse; cover torn, pages bent, spine broken—the souvenir scars of a wonderful adventure that still brings a grin even when alone. But none of that matters if the book is more important than its words. And the same is true for a tablet. Neither is to be placed on a shelf and venerated as the next big thing. It is to be consumed. Used. Pushed. Threatened. Challenged. Loved.
The tablet as an e-reader is a portal to another land, another time. A beautiful place that has not gone unnoticed by nonprofits who are delivering tablets by the thousands to sub-Saharan Africa, where books made out of actual paper are all but unknown. Each pencil-thin rectangle of screen real estate is a world-class library filled with an ever-growing collective record of humanity, a record that is as much a birthright on this planet as food and water.
The perfect storm of technology and literacy empowers my students to go far beyond grade-appropriate childhood dreams. Students actually trust us to fulfill our promise of educating them better than any child before has been taught. And through technology, today they know more, see more, and demand more. At no time in human history have teachers had the tools to actually deliver on that promise.
Dr. Martin Horejsi is associate professor of Instructional Technology and Science Education in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Montana, Missoula. He was previously a middle and high school science teacher, and his areas of specialty include mobile technologies, collaborative applications, digital creative expression, standard and nonstandard digital assessments, wireless data collection, hybrid and blended learning environments, and innovative classroom uses of consumer technologies. Dr. Horejsi is a board member of the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE), writes a column and blogs for the National Science Teachers Association called Science 2.0, and has been blogging about meteorites and space science since 2002 in his Meteorite-Times.com column titled “The Accretion Desk.”
