When Tech Tools are too Cool for School

If you have never used an air compressor, you are missing out. This highly customizable tool is indispensable in any shop. How does it work? The motor on the compressor draws air into a tank, squeezing more air into the tank than would naturally fit under normal circumstances. This pressurized air is then used to provide power to a wide variety of tools. In auto shops, you will hear mechanics tightening bolts with air impact wrenches. Carpenters use nail guns power by air compressors. Of course, you fill your tires with air from an air compressor, and someday you may even drive a car that is powered by compressed air. These are all wonderful uses of a very powerful tool.

In my wood shop class, my students' favorite pneumatic extension is the blow gun. This is an attachment that simply allows you to blow compressed air from a hose. It's handy for getting dust out of tight spaces or out of your hair. Many of my students think it also makes a great dust brush and broom. Why sweep when you can just blow dust all over the place? Well, unfortunately, this method is noisy, fills your lungs with dust, and after you leave the shop, all of the dust in the air just settles back down and nothing is any cleaner.

Cool tools are hard to hide. Everybody wants to use them whether they are helpful or simply a distraction. This is normal. People like to play.

Like air compressor, computers are incredibly versatile tools, and they should be widely used in education. However, they should not be used just for the sake of using technology. If the practice does not add value to learning than it is not a practice worth having in school. Technology without an educational purpose is not only a waste of precious time in school, it can also be rather boring.

I teach a high school ICT class, and I constantly struggle to find good reasons for my students to use new tools. Because there is no required academic content to the course, I try to incorporate as much as I can from various disciplines and life in general. I can't get my students to buy into “making a website because I need to make a website for class”. There has to be a reason for making the website.

This is actually one of the reasons I have advocated getting laptops at my school and incorporating more technology into the general curriculum. There are more opportunities to use technology for authentic reasons in general academia versus learning different tools in Computer Class that will never be used anywhere else because the rest of education is done with paper and pencils.

Whether the teacher's objective is to meet the state standards or to give the students a more engaging learning experience, computers can be very useful, but student engagement is more than just doing something. Engagement means being engrossed in the tasks of learning. Teachers who are eager to use more technology will struggle to use it appropriately. They are learning too. This does not mean they should avoid using computers in their classrooms. It simply means they need to go slowly and reflect about what works. Teachers and students should always ask, “did that activity make learning easier or better?” Then they need to determine why and how. In this way, educational communities can determine what is valuable and what is really just a waste of required seat time.