How Technology can up the Ante

In our efforts to keep pace with 21st century skills, teaching for thinking, learning to learn, it behooves us to keep in mind that technology is the tool, not the teacher. Like fire, it is a good servant, but a bad master. Here are a few things to keep in mind when trying to decide the value of a tool, whether or not it's worth the investment in the time it takes to learn the ins and outs of how it works.

1. Technology has to make it better. An ipad may be the flavor of the month because it grabs our attention, but not at the cost of dumbing down the learning. There are too many apps out there that are really just glorified drill and kill digital worksheets but the bling of the tool can blind us to that fact.

2. Technology has to provide access where previously access has been unavailable. I love that I can follow my favorite writers/thinkers on Twitter or contact them by email through their blogs. It makes the world a smaller place and reminds me that indeed, it is the relationship that counts! Say Yes to the tool that connects us in meaningful ways!

3.Technology has to help us do things in ways so different that it transforms how we think, opens us up to new perspectives, connections, ideas, feelings, behaviors. We can't predict whether a new scheme will change us for the better or the worse. The advent of Print fast tracked Socrates' lament that memory would deteriorate and that oral traditions would decline, but the trade off was that reading allowed the masses (that's us) greater access to information and it leveled the political playing field, shifting power structures and ushering in the age of democracy in places where this may never have happened. New isn't always better and while we don't know how these tools will change us, if we keep in mind that our bottom line is to be "the very we that we can be"  in the sense of maximizing our full creative potential for the good of the collective (that's everyone), then we can use technology tools to further that end. Sounds Pollyanna-ish I know, but hey, the Golden Rule has worked well for centuries and I'm not about to mess with that notion.

4. Lastly, technology tools have to help us make the routine, mundane things easier so that we can devote more time to creating. When Creativity, the spirit inside all of us to be our full, true selves is unleashed by tools that afford us what Clay Shirky calls cognitive surplus, the time to think, to create, to be a better version of our past selves, that's got to be a good thing. Martha would agree.