Technology and schools - not meant to be

Education and technology are supposed to be espoused. Technology helps students learn, and the students use that learning to make new and improved technology. A wonderful cycle indeed, but only in theory. In our school systems, the principals, deans, and board officials that have the final say in the use of technology are Baby Boomers, with maybe a few from Generation X. The prime of their learning ability came in the 1970s and 1980s, during which computers often spanned wall-to-wall and the mouse was still the creature that stole your cheese. Many, of course, have eagerly jumped onto the technological bandwagon, and it is these people that have really ushered in this age of near-ubiquitous use of computers and high technology throughout the developed world. Yet some of the people in this age group still struggle with the concept of e-mail, wonder what a google is, and try to dispose of their computer mouse as if it were a pest. And when you put these people in charge of a school and the technology within schools, the results aren't pretty.

To many budding 3D artists and digital designers, working with familiarity is a great way to begin. Many such people are high school kids, playing around with level-editors and other readily available 3D engineering software to give their creative side a little workout. This should be a goodthing. Engineering is a great career that has lost much glamor in the past decade or two, and this experimentation at a young age is vital to the development of the interest in such a career. Yet when one boy recreated his school in the level editor of an online shooter, he was labelled a terrorist and arrested. After the police searched his room, they discovered the almighty potential weapon: a hammer he had used to fix his bed. The boy was promptly expelled without any sort of trial or hearing.

Malware is a common thorn in the Internet user's side. School technology is, unfortunately, just as vulnerable to such infiltration as any home computer. This is exacerbated when the tech department at a school fails to update its security software. As such, when a Connecticut substitute teacher returned to her classroom to find her students crowded around a computer running a pornographic pop-up loop, rather than spurring a reinstallation of expired firewalls and out-of-date virus scanners, she was arrested, charged, and found guilty of indecent exposure. The school district admitted that its software was out of date, but still placed the blame on the teacher for voluntarily accessing the pornographic material. The teacher faces forty years in prison for her absolutely outrageous offense.

Separation of church and state has been a part of this nation since Roger Williams founded Rhode Island on that premise. Thus, when a student discovered his history teacher preaching Jesus as a savior and telling students that they belonged in Hell if they did not accept that as fact, he set out to tape record his teacher's daily sermons as proof. However, when the school board reviewed the evidence, rather than disciplining the teacher for breaking state laws, they banned tape recorders instead.

It is clear that there is an obvious disparity between the knowledge and technological savvy between students and administrators, and even between teachers and administrators. I guess the true marriage between technology and education will have to wait until the administrators of education catch up to technology and can make fair and sensible rulings regarding the use of technology.