Schools swallowed the hype and boasted, as a powerful marketing tool, that they had more computer labs than their rivals. As a principal, I would always finish the school tour for prospective parents with a visit to our shiny new computer lab!
I became a computerphile when I discovered that these soon to be ubiquitous intelligent machines could save me hours when creating the school timetable.
I then completed a postgraduate course aiming to discover the cornucopia of benefits and applications IT could deliver in the classroom.
It was then that my suspicions grew about the extravagant claims about the efficacy of tech in the classroom, until I gradually became a fully-fledged device sceptic.
Nothing in the next 30 years has convinced me that the only winners in this multi-million-dollar IT heist have been Big Tech.
The promise of salad days ahead in return for massive investment in IT has not materialised.
The OECD recently concluded that using IT is unlikely to result in significant improvements in educational outcomes. In fact, there is evidence it may actually result in worse academic outcomes.
The research concluded that successful learning outcomes using technology depends on pedagogy, teacher skill, and judicious implementation.
Like any tool, the technology will have limitations and will only be as effective as the skill of the user.
There is no doubt that tech in the classroom has improved digital literacy. Many students are more savvy than their teachers, creating impressive, animated, whiz bang presentations, reflective more on their experimentation and the hours spent on their home devices rather than their tuition at school.
However, this does not translate into any improvement in higher order deep thinking skills, whether it be synthesis or analysis or the capacity to problem solve.
The exponential growth of AI has become a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is a more than useful research tool for both teachers and students. However, its scope for plagiarism and intellectual laziness is a real concern.
My argument is that education technology has not been the promised golden goose. Only in the hands of effective pedagogues will learning outcomes improve.
Yet tech tools are certainly efficacious in some ways. Students’ questions are quickly answered and processed with instantaneous diagnostic feedback, and they can be particularly effective where visualisation or simulation is important.
Similarly, there is strong evidence that edtech can benefit struggling learners or those with additional needs through offering personalised pacing and feedback.
Sure, students’ written work might be enhanced with AI, although when forced to undertake exams their apparent gains in literacy will often be overstated.
With almost religious fervour, IT zealots have won the battle. IT has dominated and will continue to rule our classrooms and school culture.
It is then even more important that Luddites like myself exhort educational leaders and teachers to critically re-evaluate how technology is being used in their schools.
Even more important is the challenge to not only graduate digitally literate students, but to teach them how to be discriminating, responsible and sceptical when using these powerful tools.
