A snow storm, the keys to the bus, and a teleporter

I’m writing this from my parents’ house, on a bit of an impromptu mini-vacation, having fled Connecticut in search of electricity, heat, and hot water. Of course, power was restored to my school while I was driving here, meaning I will be turning around to un-flee early tomorrow morning. In a way I can’t quite put my finger on, this feels like a metaphor for my entire fall.

As frustrating as another multi-day power outage is (especially when it’s so cold!), it was nice to have an excuse, after a very busy fall and especially busy October, to cocoon myself in blankets and sleep for a very long time. My body and brain were both overdue for a little hibernation.

My job has changed a bit this fall, as I’ve found myself taking on more and more in the realm of technology integration. To be honest, the line between librarian and ed tech facilitator has always been a little fuzzy for me; frankly, I think the line between educator and ed tech facilitator should generally be a little fuzzy. All educators should be using and reflecting on the role of educational technology—and guiding students in using and reflecting on technology.

Over the years I’ve spent working here, and particularly this fall as we’ve launched our iPad program, I’ve found myself getting more and more directly involved with ed tech. Finally this fall I had a meeting with “powers that be” types and said, basically, “I’m driving this bus. I need the keys.” And they gave me the keys! Which is awesome! And overwhelming! But the other really great thing that came out of that meeting was knowing that my work in this area is noticed and appreciated and supported. Having recently spent time talking with colleagues in other schools who do amazing work that goes unappreciated by their supervisors, I know how lucky I am to have supportive administrators.

The first thing I decided to do in my official role as Educational Technology Facilitator was survey my faculty about their comfort level with ed tech and their professional development needs. The results in many ways confirmed what I had suspected—teachers want ed tech professional development to be iterative and hands on. Not a few days a year, but ongoing—and they also want the opportunity for one-on-one support and independent learning. I’ve been working on creating more and more tutorials, which also helps with the “I’ve answered this question a million times” feeling—now I have a ton of links I can send out when needed. I’m also trying to set up informal “drop-in” tech instruction times during the school day (as well as before and after). I’m hoping to do this a bit more now that I’m done with conference travel for a little while.

The survey also garnered a request to “learn all the things” as well as a teleporter. It’s reassuring to know that my colleagues have totally realistic expectations of what I’ll be able to accomplish in this role.

My next goal for this role (and I’m saying it here in the hopes that someone will hold me to it) is to institute a “23 things” style program for my faculty. While at AASL I saw a presentation about doing exactly that, and got some great ideas that I plan on stealing.

More AASL reflections (hopefully) to come in the next couple weeks. I have a feeling that things are genuinely going to slow down, but I have some ideas and reflections I’d like to share (including the slides from my Learning Commons presentation).

Tangentially related, if you haven’t already, please check out School Libraries: What’s Now, What’s Next, What’s Yet to Come, a collaborative ebook edited by Kristin Fontichiaro and Buffy Hamilton. I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

It’s not about what we do, it’s about who we are

At the end of one of the sessions I went to at ISTE (yes, this is me finally writing my ISTE reflection) I had an interesting conversation with two English teachers about perceptions of librarians. They were definitely pro librarian, and both expressed sympathy about how school librarians were getting “beat up” lately, and asked me why I thought that was happening. One mentioned that she had been to a session about finding research, and said that “library/librarian” was put near the bottom of the list of resources for finding good research sources (it wasn’t clear to me whether that list had been generated by the presenters or the audience, but either way--ouch). She wondered why so many people still didn’t “get it.”

I don’t really have an answer for that--well, actually, I have lots of answers for that, but no “one size fits all” answer. But one of the core issues is, I believe, about relationships.

One of the issues that this teacher raised was that so many students seem to gravitate towards sites that they often KNOW contains less-than-scholarly information, which is something I’ve seen as well.
I told her that one of my theories about why students like Yahoo!Answers (and other similar sites) is because they feel like they’re getting the info from a person--even if that person is demonstrably crazy. They want to know that they’re getting information from a person--they want a connection to the information source.

This echoed an idea that had come up in the session we’d just sat through (The “Yeah, Buts”: Answering the Top 10 arguments against change)--an idea that I thought was one of the most important and relevant ideas I’d heard discussed during the entire conference:

Successful change is not just built on rational arguments; it requires an emotional investment and response.

This was an idea I’d been looking to hear more of after Buffy Hamilton’s amazing, beautiful talk about enchantment (a video of Buffy’s talk, as well as her slidedeck, is available on her blog, and you should all go watch it if you haven’t already).

So often we get excited about new tools and new ideas, but neglect to build the relationships that will help us bring other teachers along on our journey. And sometimes our immersion in technology can, frankly, lead to a kind of arrogance. Every time I hear a librarian say something along the lines of “librarians are the ONLY ones in schools who know about X” with X being anything from emerging technologies, to reading, to (in an article I read recently) knowledge production and consumption, I cringe. Really? How off-putting. That assertion is often accompanied by some thinly-veiled resentment that their expertise is not more widely recognized or valued. Obviously I know that there are many librarians who don’t do this, but I’ve seen it happen enough that it seems to be a trend.

If I were a teacher working in a school with one of these librarians I would not feel like my own perspective and expertise were valued or welcome--whether I were new to these technologies and ideas and just trying them out, or had developed my own knowledge and was putting it to use in my classroom. When someone else in my building says they’re the “only” one who knows how to do something, I don’t feel like they’re going to be receptive to what I may have learned and discovered.

Assertions of our own expertise--insistence on our own rightness--cuts off conversation and limits the possibilities that can develop when we take the time and effort to build relationships. It may mean having to answer what we think of as obvious questions (though I’ve found that answering “obvious” questions helps me refine my own thinking), and it may mean admitting that we don’t something. But that means learning something new. We shouldn’t just be collaborating with teachers in order to improve student learning--we need to collaborate with teachers in order to improve our own learning.

Because, to get back to my earlier point, we learn best when we learn from other people. We want to feel a connection to the people we’re learning from. I can be interested in an idea I read about and stumble across, but when I get to discuss (or hear someone talk about) how they actually made that idea happen in their school--that’s when I get excited about trying something new. Likewise, I get more excited about a new idea of my own when I’m able to share it with others.

This is, for me, one of the most valuable things about conferences--spending several days sharing space with 13,000 other people who are also excited about new ideas and learning, and making real connections with those people

And this is the feeling we need to bring to our students and teachers. If all we talk about is the STUFF we do or have, we are never going to get as many people on board that we would if we focused on WHO we are. We need to sell not what we do, but who we are. All libraries have different resources to offer, but the one thing that should be consistent across all libraries is that there is value added by the personal interactions you have with the librarian--whether that’s a personal reference interview or the value that’s added by organizing and building a collection in order to meet the unique needs of that school.

We all know students and teachers who insist they don’t need the library because “everything is on Google.” We know we have more to offer, but unless we focus on building those relationships, no one else will.

Identifying the cart and the horse (and then putting them in order)

Right as the closing keynote at ISTE was beginning I found out that my ride home from the airport had flaked out on me, which sent me into a bit of a panic. So I was one of those awful people who texted through the first part of the session, trying to arrange a new ride. I felt awful, but given that I was leaving for the airport in about eight hours, I also didn’t have many options. Luckily, I was able to arrange for a new ride very quickly and then devote my undivided attention to the speaker.

And I’m glad I did. The speaker was Jeff Piontek, the Head of School at Hawaii Technology Academy, and he was fantastic.

I’m going to do this in “what he said I what I thought” style again.

• Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve

There’s a larger statement about educational philosophy in this idea, but there’s also day-to-day feet-on-the-ground implications. Oftentimes when we want to try something innovative or new in our teaching we “can’t” because we have too much material to get through (often with a test or semester end in mind); the pressure of the “can’t” comes from both internal and external forces. But are students really learning more if we manage to give them more facts within a certain time frame? And if there are—as I believe there are—certain core skills students need to be successful, what’s to say those skills can’t be taught—and better learnt—when contextualized in a problem-solving exercise? If students need to learn these skills to be successful in the real world, don’t just tell them that—open the newspaper and show them how these skills apply.

• No one really knows what’s going to happen in 5, 10, 20 years.

His second point doesn’t really jibe with the rhetoric we usually hear when talking about education. We tend to hear “Kids need to be able to do X,” or “We’re preparing kids for jobs where they’ll do Y.” Which may be true, but is just as likely not to be true. So do we want today’s students to know certain facts and ideas, or be able to implement a set of skills? Which lead really nicely to this point:

• Robotics is not about the robots; it’s about critical thinking, team building, problem solving.

At the pace things move, any robot a student learns to build in 9^th grade will be beyond obsolete by the time he or she is in college—let alone starting a career as an engineer. But the skills they learn—critical thinking, team building, problem solving—will never be obsolete. These skills can be used for everything from robotics to surviving the zombie apocalypse (well, that and the double tap)

• Standardized testing vs. portfolio assessments

It is, as Piontek said, the difference between one 8x10 photo vs. an entire scrapbook. Which gives you a better sense of a student’s achievement? But, as he readily acknowledged, it is pretty much impossible to do meaningful portfolio assessments when you teach 100 students. You just can’t do it. So what do we do? Well, the current answer seems to be standardized testing, which I think pushes the pendulum too far in the other direction. And as much as we would love to see it, I don’t think hoping for teachers’ course loads to be cut in half is realistic. Is there a middle ground?

• Students and teachers want to be engaged with other people. It’s why we go to conferences—in order to engage with ideas and questions

Learning is, inherently, collaborative. Yet so much of what we do in schools requires students to work independently. And that, again, is driven in large part by our need to assess students and their individual progress. And knowing how each student is doing is important—collaborative work can’t become a way for struggling students to fall through the cracks. But there are meaningful ways to engage all students in collaborative work that are neither rocket science nor radically new. There is also something in this about the importance of teaching and planning collaboratively.

I also really appreciated, especially at a tech conference, the need for human connection that is a significant part of our learning. Many of those connections become easier with online communications, but there is something about face-to-face communication and learning that is really important—and we can’t lose sight of that for ourselves or our students.

• STEM to STEAM

STEM is the shorthand used to refer to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math; Piontek argued that we need to add Arts to that acronym in order to truly prepare our students for the challenges they will face. We need to bring back creativity and make it an integral part of what we do—and what we encourage our students to do. As Piontek said, you can teach math and science skills, but you NEED innovation. It’s the unGoogleable skill.

• I would say I don’t like to criticize, but honestly I do.

I would take his brand of thoughtful, reflective criticism any day. The phrase “constructive criticism” is slowly becoming meaningless—it’s a way of saying “you’re doing it wrong, and I know how to do it better.” Sometimes I like the type of criticism that doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but is instead interested in unearthing all the questions.

• There’s no longer an excuse not to know how

This goes back to something I was writing about one of the ALA sessions—basic know-how is no longer a high level skill. I was thinking of this the other day I was trying to figure out a new knitting pattern; I didn’t understand how to do the stitch I was supposed to use, but I was able to quickly Google a video of someone demonstrating that stitch. That does not make me an expert knitter. Knowing how to find something on the Internet is not a “21^st Century Skill;” 21^st century skills are not the same skills we’ve been teaching for generations, just done on a computer. The finding information part is now easier than it’s ever been; the real new skills we need to be teaching are what we do with that information once we have it. And sometimes we won’t know—but our students will have ideas, and we need to encourage that. As Piontek said, “Tip over the boat, even if you don’t know how to swim. Your students will teach you how to swim.”

• All children should be able to give it a go. All children should have access

I wasn’t sure whether to stand up and clap or weep for joy at this. In part because you could tell he really, truly genuinely meant it. This is one of the issues that comes up a lot working with students with learning disabilities; there is this notion that we need to spend all our time on “the basics” and that we can get to this other stuff if there’s time—but this extra “stuff” is really the core of what we should be doing—particularly with LD students. These “extra” skills are what they’re really good at, and are their entry into learning the basics. When talking about basic skills versus 21^st century skills, many argue that we need to be sure not to put the cart before the horse. I agree. I just think we’ve misidentified which is the cart and which is the horse.

It's the students, stupid

ISTE was amazing and overwhelming and I learned a million and six different things, but in the interest of finishing my thoughts on this year’s conferences before, you know, next year, I’m going to condense a significant percentage of the conference down to “I learned a lot; it was cool” and spend my time reflecting on the two keynote sessions I attended.

I missed the opening keynote session (though it was, from what I hear, a “death by PowerPoint” experience, so I’m not exactly heartbroken). Tuesday morning there was a keynote panel titled "Innovation and Excellence: Buzz Words or Global Imperative." Speaking on the panel were Karen Cator (Director of the Office of Education Technology, U.S. Department of Education), Jean-Francois Rischard (former VP of the World Bank), Terry Godwaldt (Director of Programming, Center for Global Education), and Shaun Koh (a student from Singapore). Despite having the least “impressive” title, Shaun Koh was the speaker I found most interesting, and would gladly sit through as many speeches as he cared to give. Not that the others weren’t interesting, but his perspective and forthrightness were the most engaging.

Anyway, their thoughts and what I think of them:

Terry Godwaldt

• 21^st century skills require deep understanding of basic skills

Again, it’s nice to hear this emphasized; these new skills don’t replace the other skills we need to teach, they build on them.

• You don’t have to invent projects; you can just open the newspaper.

Want to make learning relevant? Then don’t invent a project that’s like the real world; use a project from the real world.

• At Google and 3M, they trust employees. We need to trust teachers

An obvious applause line, but a good one. This is, I think, a big part of why teachers rail against standardized tests—the implicit message is, “We don’t trust you to know what’s important to teach, or how to assess it.” It’s the problem with over-aggressive Internet filters, and administrators who push back when teachers try to do something new and innovative. The message is: We don’t think you know what you’re doing, and we don’t trust you. It’s really hard to keep moving forward when you don’t feel like your supervisors trust that you know where you’re going. And then people complain that teachers don’t do anything new or innovative. It’s enough to drive a person crazy.

• Why did you work to solve these problems? Because they were there.

We need to instill in students the same kind of drive to achieve that got Mallory to the top Everest--I have to tackle this problem not because someone told me to, or because I’m getting a grade, or because it will look good on my college application. I need to tackle this problem because it’s there.

Jean-Francois Rischard

• The dictatorship of the standard test doesn’t allow much wiggle room for innovation.

It was nice to hear someone outside the (sometimes insular) world of education acknowledge that we are stuck between two very demanding masters—we need to make sure students get high marks on standardized tests , and we need to make sure that students develop critical thinking skills and the ability to learn independently. Which are two diametrically opposed goals. It is possible, and I’ve seen teachers do it, but it’s not easy and it generally takes the kind of effort you see in those “teacher as super hero” movies wherein it’s made clear that all you have to do to be a good teacher is give up absolutely everything else in your life.

Karen Cator

• Stay on questions longer

There is a time pressure that exists in education. Idea not working as quickly as you hoped? Students not finding the answer or finishing projects at the pace you've established? Then move on! Or, you know, not. It takes time to build momentum and get really engaged, and we tend to switch gears right as we reach that point. So take time. Really engage with big questions. And it will take a while for you and students to get used to that pace, so have patience with that as well. But in order to keep students really engaged with problems, we also can’t be using the same types of “find facts and regurgitate them” projects; they need to tackle real “real world” problems.

• Education is the most reticent system, but change is possible. We need to start where we are

Not where we wish we were. We can’t talk about reforming and building upon the education system we wish we had; we have to work with the one we actually have, thorns and all. Just like we want our students to wrestle with real world problems, we need to do the same.

Shaun Koh

• Technology is just an enabler. Don’t forget why you started teaching; technology makes that come alive.

There is no technology on the planet that will turn a bad teacher or a bad lesson into a good teacher or an interesting lesson. Good technology used ineptly is not good technology. I can’t remember if I heard it in this session, or another one, or only saw it on Twitter, but someone at some point said “The killer app for 21^st century learning is a good teacher.” It really doesn’t get more complicated than that.

• Listen to and watch your students--keep an open mind to ideas your students have

We are, as teachers, often afraid of letting go of control. And I feel comfortable saying this because I’m not completely comfortable with letting go of control myself. But I’ve done it, and you know what? The world did not end, and I learned something. It’s okay to say, “I don’t know,” but it’s even more okay to say, “I didn’t know; thanks for showing me.”

• Testing sucks the passion out of learning

Another obvious applause line in a room full of teachers, but you can’t exactly argue the point. There is this conversation going on about how, in order to give time to subjects that are now getting short shrift due to standardized testing, we need to start testing those subjects as well. Ugh. No. I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but what we need to do is disabuse ourselves of the notion that the only way to measure learning is through standardized testing. Yes, it makes compiling statistics easier. But those statistics are a) essentially meaningless and b) completely and totally useless to the students who we are supposed to be educating. It’s not about us or our need for data. It’s about students. I think we need to revive the “It’s the economy, stupid” signs, but replace “economy” with “students.”

Widget workshop on a Wednesday, and other non-alliterative thoughts

I went to a workshop on widgets today, taught by the wonderful Polly-Alida Farrington; if you work in a Connecticut library and haven't taken advantage of one of her workshops, you're missing out. I took her podcasting workshop my first year as a librarian, which is what got me started on creating recorded book trailers, and really helped me shape how I do reading promotion.

Today's workshop was also excellent, and still has me thinking of new ideas; this is one of the things I love most about Polly's workshops--in addition to feeling like I have a really solid of how to do something, you get a million reasons why you should do it. I keep a notebook open next to me throughout the workshop--not to take notes on what I'm learning, but to jot down ideas for how I can apply my new knowledge after the workshop.

I currently have a wikispaces page for my library's web presence, but I am growing increasingly fed up with its limitations. Up until now it's been where teachers posted homework assignments, but my school is getting a shiny new web portal for homework and other such things, meaning there's no real reason for me to maintain wikispaces. I'm not sure what the library presence will be like on the new site, or how much control I'll have over what it looks like (though I'm taking part in the training this summer--I'll be one of the "train the trainers" type people, which means I'll get a thorough look at the behind the scenes stuff. Given that, and given that my IT department knows I'm capable, I'm hoping I'll be able to have a fair amount of control when it comes to adding and manipulating library content).

But I know no matter how much I can do, there will still be some limitations. And given that I'm trying to become more professionally active outside of my school and do more presenting (hopefully even beyond the CASL Conference, though that first step was huge for me), and maybe even publishing (the first part of that would, of course, be writing something to submit for publication), I'm thinking more and more about creating my own website outside of my school's site. You know, in my spare time.

There are, of course, limitations to any free site, which would mean ponying up some cash. Which, no matter how little cash it actually is, feels like a commitment. Which could be a good motivator for working towards doing more presenting and writing. And I know some of this is just part of the post-workshop high, but the more I think about it, the more I like this idea. Once I learn what the library's presence will be like on my school's website, I'll be able to come up with a plan. If I can do most of what I want, this project moves to the back burner; if not, it gets moved up the list.

If and when I decide to go ahead with this plan, I can, of course, draw upon the wisdom of Hank Green. And, of course, sign up for Polly's Wordpress workshop.

Four down, four to go

I have been scanning like a madwoman the past couple days, in a hopefully-not-futile attempt to get all of the novels for this Spring's English classes converted to e-text and mp3 before classes resume. I am, clearly, reaping the rewards for having had the audacity to take some of my vacation time as an actual, you know, vacation.

In slicing and scanning these books (side note: I am considering starting a business called the Slice 'n' Scan), I have learned several things:

a) Mass market paperbacks SUCK. Slicing out the pages without thoroughly mangling them takes more concentration than I would like to give to such a task. Also, they have less of a white-space border around the text, so as you inevitably get farther away from cutting right against the spine of the book as you get deeper into the book, there is way less room for error. Also, when you put tape over the inevitable errors, it obscures the text beneath it, meaning text editing, which is a pain.

b) There are two settings for scanning--single-sided, and double-sided. Generally I leave the program set to double-sided, as that's most of what I scan. However, I haven't figured out how to make that the default, which means when I have to re-start the program after an error, or have selected single-sided to rescan a page, I have to remember to turn double-sided scanning back on. Who wants to guess how many times I only copied one side of the pages from an entire chapter before realizing I had failed to do so? Who wants to guess how many times I did that twice in a row?

This process makes my brain get a little. . . squishy.

c) It would be so much less mind-numbing if I could somehow do something else, at least while the pages were scanning, but this task requires *just enough* attention that you can't do something else at the same time. Not that that stops me from trying. I have managed to get the number of unread items in my reader down to 70 (from 532), though I did make use of the "Mark All As Read" button more than once, and neither task really gets my full attention, leading to the types of errors mentioned above.

d) The optical character recognition program is really, really good, but far, far from perfect. It's hard to explain, even if I did have a visual, but I'll try. The text you see on the screen from the page you scan is not necessarily the same as the text the program "sees" and reads. Sometimes I can tell, while editing, what underlying text needs to be corrected. Oftentimes I have no idea until I save a copy as a text file, and see a random string of symbols. And I'll admit that I don't always go back and correct these errors because there is just so much I can do. In reality, I should be doing a LOT more text editing (and I won't get into the details of the types of errors I see and routinely force myself to ignore), but I have to make a decision between having good quality copies of all the books or excellent quality copies of a few of the books. I hate having to make that compromise, but I think I've made the right one.

Also, I can only correct one word at a time. I have no words for how aggravating that is.

Effect and Cause

I finally took the time to watch PBS's Digital Nation this weekend; I chopped vegetables and folded laundry while doing so, in a semi-deliberate attempt to totally miss the point about multi-tasking. It's well worth the 90 minutes--lots of thought-provoking stuff. They offered more questions than answers, which is only appropriate for an area in which we don't have a lot of answers yet.

Near the beginning Sherry Turkle (who was talking about student multi-tasking in class) said, "They need to be stimulated in ways they didn't need to be stimulated before." Which is a line of thinking I've heard before, and one I don't really buy 100%.

We seem to allow ourselves and others get really casual about proving causation when it comes to the use of new technologies, particularly by students. Just because students are adapting (sometimes somewhat obsessively) to new technologies, it doesn't mean that the technology created the need for stimulation; it seems more likely that the technology filled the need for stimulation. If you've been even casually aware of educational trends for any length of time, you'll realize that the need for stimulation is not new. Heck, if you've ever been a student you'll realize this. I remember zoning out in boring classes in high school, spending time doodling in my notebook, or doing work for other classes. I remember one girl who regularly spent class time painting her nails. Sure, these were less obvious distractions than more contemporary technologies, but you can't convince me that students' desire to occupy their brains in some way during classes that don't stimulate them is somehow a new trend.

The other, similar argument I hear regularly is that kids today are "wired differently." Until I'm shown actual brain scans that show that today's students have made sudden, drastic evolutionary leaps, I refuse to believe that students are actually "wired" differently. The way they meet the need for stimulation is different, but the need is the same as it has always been.

One of the things that struck me as I watched Digital Nation is that they were using shots of students fooling around on their computers during class to show how distracted students were during class. Only all of these shots were taken in large lecture halls, where students were expected to be passive. I've sat in those large lecture halls. Some of you have sat in them with me. And I guarantee you that even though I was a good student who was frequently interested in the topic, if I'd had a laptop in class I also would have been distracted by it. Because large lecture halls and classes that don't actively engage students in their own learning are boring.

The need to actively engage students in their own learning has always been there--but the introduction of new technologies into the classroom has made it more urgent. Many teachers seem to be looking for a way to "change" students, to make them put down the electronics and go back to being "good students." But the students haven't changed; they need the same things they always have, that we haven't been giving them for ages. So we, as teachers, have to be the ones who change.

Which is not to say I think we need to be all stimulation all the time. The other part of the series that really resonated for me was from the extended interview with Sherry Turkle, called The Need for Stillness. I believe that as librarians we are in a unique position to help provide the space and structure for quiet reflection--which is vitally important to the process of both consuming and producing knowledge.

Technology Tip: Don't use school-issued laptops to spy on kids at home

First, from boingboing: School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home
(pay special attention to the last paragraph.)

Next, from CBS: Suit: Schools Spied on Students Via Webcam

And also from SafeKids.com:
Suit claims school used webcams to spy on students at home

Now, from me:
For. The. Love. Is there some sort of megalomania screening tool we can use when hiring school administrators? Or really anyone? I've never really listened to any of the "nanny state" ranters, but things like this make it seem like those people make some sort of sense, and that's annoying.

The thing that I think I find most frustrating about this is that people will point to it as being an example of why "technology is bad" and how we should be wary when letting students use computers in school (or out)--a line of argument that shows a real lack of critical thinking (or basic literacy) skills on the part of the person making that argument. The technology didn't DO anything here; it was the PERSON using the technology that created was spying on students and their families and invading privacy.

Technology is neither good nor bad. It simply IS. Until we have fully sentient computers, you will not convince me that there is anything inherently "bad" or "wrong" about using technology. The bad things that happen are the direct results of the people using the machines, and they are the only responsible parties. Which is yet another reason why--rather than sticking our fingers in our ears and saying "lalalala-technology-is-bad-lalalalala" we need to educate students in how to be responsible, ethical, and adept users of technology.