Diane Ravitch Reign of Error Review
Since my review is more than a day late (and likely not worth a dollar), I needed to find a niche to focus on in my review. Fortunately, there was a small kerfuffle in the ed tech blogging world last weekend around whether Diane Ravitch is hostile to technology. Please, when you are reading that piece, continue all the way to the end because the author Scott McLeod, credits some of Ravitch’s critiques about education technology and lists them.
Based on the conversation started there, I decided to look at whatRavitch says in her book. My conclusion, she’s not hostile, but is skeptical about education technology. She does have some idea of progressive and meaningful uses of technology in the classroom. Here is what I found…
What the book says
Page 7 – Their school should have a rich arts program, where students learn to sing, dance, plan an instrument, join an orchestra or a band, perform in a play, sculpt, or use technology to design structures, conduct research, or create artworks.
Introduction to Chapter 17 -New technologies appear almost daily, and schools are rightly expected to help young people learn to use them. Computers and access to the Internet are nearly ubiquitous, and no one doubts that if used appropriately, these are valuable tools for teaching and learning. Ingenious teachers integrate technology into the their lessons and engage young people in science experiments, historical research, and projects of all kinds. Students today can vicariously visit other lands, not just read about them in a textbook. They can see and hear presidents giving their major speeches. They can watch the historical events that changed the world with their own eyes, as if they were there. The possibilities for teaching and learning is within reach, one where students can learn at their own pace and explore topics far beyond the assignment.
These are both pretty strong statements in favor of a progressive use of technology in the classroom, that most of us would rally around, and there were some others in the book as well. All of the negatives are well citation-ed examples of cyber-charters gone amok, and making a fortune while producing dismal results, and other blatant mis-uses of education technology. The most judgmental statement I found was that online