{"id":239104,"date":"2024-07-03T00:45:31","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T00:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/03\/what-problem-does-technology-help-schools-solve-teachthought\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:15:38","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:15:38","slug":"what-problem-does-technology-help-schools-solve-teachthought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/03\/what-problem-does-technology-help-schools-solve-teachthought\/","title":{"rendered":"What Problem Does Technology Help Schools Solve? TeachThought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>by <strong>Terrell Heick<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"block-c888e086-dcb0-4af3-8d49-5a5041a36e7e\">Will robots replace teachers?<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-57a32aca-82ea-4d9b-b677-599257d04d5e\">I was asked this in an interview a years ago for <a previewlistener=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/ai-teachers-education-crisis\">Futurism<\/a> and tried to offer up some abstract nonsense whose lack of clarity represented my own thinking:<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-57a32aca-82ea-4d9b-b677-599257d04d5e\">\u201cWill artificial intelligence replace teachers? Will the students themselves replace teachers through self-directed learning, social\/digital communities, and adaptive technology?\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-e6862164-782d-4690-ad08-6e4758c56222\">These might be the wrong questions, a product of our sentimentality as a culture and human insecurity in general. For example, if we say that robots can replace teachers, it is seen as a slight at teachers because we suggest that even simple, mindless machines can do what teachers do.<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-f1833089-3c2c-4bc7-a540-b873757f4bdf\">Of course, that\u2019s not at all the point or truth.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>That\u2019s what\u2019s confusing about new tools: they don\u2019t improve things as much as they change them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p id=\"block-9572ffda-b776-4d17-8a80-2b0036bccbdf\">These questions are difficult to answer for other reasons, too, mainly because we are thinking about teaching and learning in terms of technology, automation, and the increasing the efficiency of <em>teaching as it is <\/em>instead of rethinking <em>teaching as it might be.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what\u2019s confusing about new tools: they don\u2019t improve things as much as they change them.<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-aea54235-5c76-45ea-a009-08eb82a793dc\">But if we can ignore that time\/space paradox and assume that the pace of social and technological change will continue to outpace change in education far, then technology can very well replace teachers as we think of them. <\/p>\n<p id=\"block-aea54235-5c76-45ea-a009-08eb82a793dc\">Will it be AI that does it? Again, today we think of AI independently and often emotionally and as an idea in the same way we used to think of electricity. <\/p>\n<p id=\"block-aea54235-5c76-45ea-a009-08eb82a793dc\">Or we think about \u2018mobile devices\u2019 today primarily in contrast to the previous tradition of \u2018non-mobile technology.\u2019 We can think of a smartphone as an improved wall phone rather than something else entirely.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"756\" height=\"567\" alt=\"What Problem Does Schools Solve?\" class=\"wp-image-81852 perfmatters-lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Problem-Schools-Solve.png\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"756\" height=\"567\" src=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Problem-Schools-Solve.png\" alt=\"What Problem Does Schools Solve?\" class=\"wp-image-81852\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>Telephones solved the problem of needing to communicate across distances.<\/p>\n<p>AI\u2013is it solving a problem or creating something entirely new?<\/p>\n<p><em>Technology,<\/em> as a vague term, is often (though not always) created to solve a problem.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>What problem were schools designed to address or solve?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>What About Schools?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What problem were schools designed to address or solve?<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-5c7ce95e-bbca-4b24-800e-c2dadd1710c6\">\u2018What do schools \u2018do,\u2019 and how might something else\u2013a non-school\u2013do it better?\u2019<\/p>\n<p><strong>What else could current school<\/strong>s\u2013as they are\u2013do or be?<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-5c7ce95e-bbca-4b24-800e-c2dadd1710c6\">That would be a nice start, but that isn\u2019t far enough. Move farther and ask, \u2018What human need did we originally design schools to solve?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s seeing school <em>today<\/em> as a solution.<\/p>\n<p id=\"block-d5e4a8c2-3d25-4d07-ae3e-504a098b5c68\">What does a person need to know to live well in sustainable interdependence with the people and places around them and what\u2019s the best way to help support and nurture that?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s seeing schools as they ideally might be <em>tomorrow<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Should we measure the value of technology by how it <em>improves<\/em> the former or <em>enables<\/em> the latter?<\/p>\n<p>What exactly should new tools <em>improve<\/em> or what exactly should they <em>create<\/em>?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/the-future-of-learning\/what-problem-does-technology-help-schools-solve\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] by Terrell Heick Will robots replace teachers? I was asked this in an interview a years ago for Futurism and tried to offer up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":239105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}