"I'll Google it on my iPhone," OR The Cautions of Using Technology in Education

This was my reply to an article in Wired magazine by Brian X. Chen, commenting on an ambitious iPhone deployment effort at Texas-based Abilene Christian University.

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Hi Brian,

I enjoyed your article on "How the iPhone Could Reboot Education" published on Wired online and featured on Apple Hot News.

However, I take partial exception to this passage:

"Most importantly, by allowing the students to participate in polls anonymously with the iPhone, it relieves them of any social pressure to appear intelligent in front of their peers. If they answer wrong, nobody will know who it was, ridding students of humiliation. And if students don’t understand a lesson, they can ask the teacher to repeat it by simply tapping a button on the iPhone."

My comments

We're starting to see the negative effect that Internet addiction, gaming and social media has had on the social development of an entire generation. Now, ACU is promoting further withdraw from the benefits of classroom competition by filling their seats with students who almost exclusively (or try to) interact primarily through technology.

We are a social species; a species in which the human condition is experienced and grows through social interaction. Social, educational and media technology are simply the toasters for social interaction. If the advantages of social interactions are removed as part of the learning process, it's like removing the nuts, bolts, soldering and wires that keep the toaster assembled and functioning. Social interaction is how the human race (and all other animals) function, learn, develop, co-operate and accomplish. Technology offers wonderful tools to facilitate our social interactions, but SHOULD NEVER REPLACE the benefit to be gained from "eye-to-eye" interaction between human beings. Case in point, note how often misunderstandings arise through ill-formed text messages and emails, because it's so difficult to add the "eye-to-eye" contact part of a social interaction. We need real-time and live components to our social interactions; including the learning process. Technology should be developed and used to facilitate social interaction, not to replace the benefits derived from our very nature.

Social competition

If students are allowed "to participate in polls anonymously with the iPhone...[relieving] them of any social pressure to appear intelligent in front of their peers," we lose the benefit of social competition. We are naturally a competitive species, in private and in public. And even though competition and achievement can be obtained privately through tests, if students learn that they don't have to compete socially, they will be missing an essential component of their learning and personal development....

Because in real life, we have to compete socially to learn, achieve and accomplish:

• Standing in line to get concert tickets
• Finding a girlfriend/boyfriend in social environments (still the most significant way we meet our mates - despite the growth of Internet dating)
• Job interviews
• Winning contracts
• Securing customers and market share
  
• Presenting ideas at work/public speaking
• Sports
• Convincing your partner, family and friends of your ideas
  
• The Stock Market...and much more

Some notes about learning and personal development:

We learn through our mistakes more than through our successes

• Healthy competition drives people to improve
• A philosophy of "a trophy for just showing up" weakens the competitive nature of human beings
• Knowing that you could be called upon to answer a question in public, will keep a student alert to do her/his reading and assignments and be prepared
• The potential for public embarrassment (public or private) is a great motivator; it's what drives people to be prepared for life

Overall, your article highlights some fantastic features of ACU's iPhone program, and the benefits. But as in any implementation of a new technology, we have to also investigate and understand the social and psychological impact.

The technology that the human race develops always seems to outpace our ability and willingness to adjust our social and psychological paradigms to keep up. As a result, social constructs are often changed outside of our planning, control or desired outcome.

Most industrial initiatives are required to conduct environmental and community impact studies, and use the results in the planning and execution of their projects. I wonder how many organizations contemplate social/social psychological/psychological studies to determine the potential effects of the implementation of new technologies beyond the obvious tangible and practical ones.

Do you know if, and what kind of social/social psychological/psychological study was conducted as part of the planning and execution of ACU's iPhone project?

Advice for students

If you're called upon to answer a question in public, and don't know the answer, simply state: "I don't know the answer to your question. However, I know how to find the answer, and if you'll give me a few minutes, I'll Google it on my iPhone."

Or, remember the peripheral lesson; do your homework.

Best regards, and keep up the great work.

Zoltán Barabás