Here’s why I love Twitter: I came upon this great conversation about using technology in education. Two very smart, thoughtful practitioners are exploring the role of tech, but also thinking about education in general. I’ll do a quick summary but you really should read the full posts:

Here’s the post I read first and that came through Twitter: Nancy Flanagan cautions against seeing technology as the answer to everything in education, and in her role as a music educator, makes a passionate plea for live, group performance:

I also know that an elegant, powerful school lesson may be as simple as reading aloud and talking, and that there are some execrable projects posted on Voicethread. The teacher who does not instill rigorous principles of editing, evaluation and content synthesis in conjunction with use of Web 2.0 tools is in many ways worse than the teacher who has not moved past the overhead projector—when the excitement of having kids’ work available to the world wears off, we may be left wondering what, exactly, they have learned.

I nodded my head when I read this: I read some 4th graders’ blogs this week, and while I applaud their use to encourage writing, many were littered with grammatical and spelling errors. Sorry, it’s the old English teacher in me who thinks you should polish work that you’re going to publish. I know blogs have a more informal reputation–and even as I write, I hope you don’t go back through my own posts to find errors that I know are there–but I think this is a place to hone technical skills as well as encourage writing. Most blog software has a draft function built in so students could do peer editing. So, I’m with you, Nancy. And, as a life long musician, I believe group live performance does offer a different insight into collaboration than a wiki or discussion forum.

Bill Ferriter over at The Tempered Radical gently disagrees with Nancy and he goes on to make an interesting point about what we personally hold dear:

I’m beginning to wonder whether or not our aversion to instructional technology is really more a result of the pleasure that we take from our own approaches to learning. Is it possible that we see “the best” learning as the way that we learn best?

Do we inherently (unintentionally?) discredit new forms of learning because they don’t remind us of what we value the most in the teaching and learning process—or because the final products aren’t the kinds of final products that “look right” to us?

I don’t know that Nancy is clinging to live performance as an outmoded type of learning, but rather suggesting that we make sure we don’t abandon everything from the past before considering its possible value in our rapidly changing world. Yet, I understand Bill’s fundamental argument: change is tough and gets tougher as we get more entrenched in our own favorite practices. I would suggest that one way to help teachers move past this is to provide ongoing, professional development that encourages teachers to do exactly what these practitioners are doing: having an in depth conversation about the issues they face.

I’ve really enjoyed reading these teacher leaders. In a side conversation, Bill and Joe Thompson are discussing the role of technology in their own lives and I found myself nodding again about the difficulty of achieving what Bill calls “digital balance.” After I finish this blog post, I’m going outside to work in my garden for an hour.

I think what I appreciate the most is their willingness to be honest about technology in their own lives and in education. Bill points out that this isn’t an either/or discussion and Joe reminds us that there are many gray areas. So, chime in here: what role should technology play in education? Or in your own life? How are you making decisions about what technology you will use and how you will use it? How do you find the digital balance in both classroom and life?