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On Wednesday and Thursday, teacher/bloggers extraordinaire Nancy Flanagan and Bill Ferriter debated the benefits of technology in the classroom, and a host of other top-flight educators added their insights in the comments section.  Their postings were so thoughtful and engaging that I just had to add my two cents.  

I had to think about the debate and resulting comments as my wife and I watched the new Pixar film Wall-e yesterday.  The film presents a technological dystopia.  Humans have escaped to outer space after filling the planet with so much consumerist junk that it can no longer sustain life.  The film reminds me of Beckett's play Endgame, whose characters inhabit trash cans, overwhelmed by the refuse of an increasingly degenerate culture.

What's more, the exiled human race portrayed in Wall-e has grown so dependent on technology that people have become physically, emotionally and intellectually incapacitated--obese, barely able to read, unaware of their surroundings, and dependent on futuristic cell phones to talk to people right next to them.  Pixar has produced a none-too-subtle cautionary tale about the dangers of technology as a destructive and dehumanizing force.

By its very existence, though, the film itself tells a very different story.  The marvelously imaginative filmmakers have used digital technologies to create a very vivid and instructive appeal for better use of technology and better stewardship of our environment.  I've read that the film can hit some of its younger viewers pretty hard, but that might not be an entirely bad thing.  Pixar, it seems, is quietly advocating for digital technology as a tool to provoke intellectual engagement and promote social change.  After all, the people at Pixar are hardly luddites.

The most depressing thing about our night at the movies, however, was the endless advertising that preceded the feature presentation.  We had to sit through a full 20 minutes of ads for cell phones and related gadgets that would be right at home in Wall-e's dystopia.  The ads openly pitched these devices as 24-hour entertainment centers and portrayed young people literally floating down city streets, glued to their personal devices, unaware of their surroundings.  The advertisers apparently couldn't appreciate the irony in their decision to buy ad space before a screening of Wall-e.

So, I guess I would have to agree with both Nancy and Bill (easy way out, I know)--as well as with a number of those who left comments on their dueling blog entries.  Technology can be a wonderful educational tool--especially in the hands of people like Bill, Nancy, and their commentators. (I've been very indebted to education and policy rep's at a number of big technology companies, who have opened my eyes to technology's potential in the classroom.)  Yet the larger consumer culture that promotes many of the most promising devices as escape hatches from the need for social engagement, contemplation, reading, serious decision-making and any intellectual effort threatens to undo educators' best work.

Perhaps this danger is reason enough to integrate technology into the classroom.  Where else will students really come to understand the real promise and perils of the gadgets they're growing up with?

I'd welcome your thoughts.