As I've spoken with practicing teachers and pre-service teachers about technology use in education, I've come across two different groups. The first are those who think that everything that is new and innovative is good. These people have little concern that new technology and new media will disrupt our systems of education; in fact, they often are encouraged by this thought. Supporting their argument is a lot of new, qualitative literature on how much students learn through their online interactions (e.g., Ito, Horst, Bittanti, et al., 2008), which occur almost always outside of the school day. In a lot of ways, these data are encouraging, suggesting that adults should just "get out of the way" and let youths learn as much as they can.
The second group of practicing teachers and pre-service teachers that I meet are much more hesitant about technology use. They argue that we need to be much more careful (and thoughtful) about what we teach our students, making sure that we guide youths to use technology as a tool for learning and creating rather than socializing. Interestingly, the people who make this argument often don't seek out ways to integrate technology into their instruction. Maybe they fear the loss of control and structure that comes with any technology integration or maybe they see more value in schools counteracting the "digital culture." These reasons, along with a host of others, coincide with another interesting phenomenon that I've noticed... there are a lot of young teachers that fall into this category. It is not that they are luddites; rather, they often view schooling in a very traditional way, possibly stemming jointly from their own experiences and classroom management fears.
These young teachers, however, exemplify David Buckingham suggests is a gap between in-school activities and out-of-school activities. Separate from the digital divide that separates those students who "have" technology and those who "have not," this divide has created two spheres of education. One sphere is within the confines of traditional schooling. The other sphere is both "real" and virtual, where students learn from their intellectual peers (whether they are all of the same age or not). This division implies that what is learned outside-of-school is not valued within academics. Conversely, it might suggest to some that what is learned inside-school has little value in the real world. Obviously (or at least hopefully), neither is true. However, as the divide widens, more and more students may come to this conclusion. These dueling worlds are not only occurring in the lives of young K-12 students, however; they also seem to be occurring in the lives of our young teachers.
This situation, if it goes unchecked, may have the potential to replicate the problem at best and deep it at worst. So, what might teacher education programs do to address the problem? We professors and older, "non-native" teachers need to consider flipping the power structure in our classrooms. Indeed, we are the experts on some things; our research and practical experiences enable us to evaluate and properly measure what works and what probably won't work in the classroom. We need to recognize, however, that we are not necessarily the experts on how to function within the digital worlds in the same ways that youths are. As an educational community, we need to think deeply about the roles that our teacher candidates can play in co-developing Ed Tech curricula so that we can better support their expert knowledge for their future roles in a variety of educational settings.
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