Why Have Instructional Technologies Been an Add-on to Classrooms?
My primary care doctor is an early adopter of technology. He is a believer that new hand-held computers can replace the stethoscope, record EKGs, and other functions. These are labor-saving devices that make him more efficient, he told me. They give him more time to spend with the patient (although the HMO I belong to mandates 20-minute appointments with longer visits allowed when special requests are made).
One of the few physicians in the HMO who volunteered to use Google Glass when it was being sold, my doctor asked me if it is OK for our conversation to be recorded as we talked. He does not use the video function of Google Glass when meeting with patients. When I asked him why he is using Google Glass, he said that with a scribe located elsewhere in the building taking down what we talk about and producing a transcript later, while I am with him, he does not have to constantly switch back-and-forth looking at the computer screen and then me. We converse about my health, answer questions, and discuss issues bothering me.
These visits with my doctor got me thinking about how teachers and physicians have encountered new technologies as they practice the art and science of teaching and ministering to both the healthy and ill. From what I encountered in schools over the past three decades when computers have been used by teachers for instruction and doctors for diagnosing and treating illnesses, I began to wonder why doctors so easily integrated new devices–either as early adopters or Why Have Instructional Technologies Been an Add-on to Classrooms? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:
