In my last post, “ICT: FutureSchools@Singapore, the MOE and the Amish”, I wondered about our tendency to “unleash” technology on society, and schools in particular. Marshall McLuhan was talking about this way back then in the 1960s.

McLuhan theorized that technology can have an effect on us because technology has that ability to “extend” or “amputate” our abilities. When McLuhan said that the “medium is the message (or massage)” he meant controversially that the medium in which we function will determine what we learn and not the content. One wonders if McLuhan is still around what he would say to the immersive virtual environments that students in Singapore will be experiencing in school soon. What abilities of ours will be extended in such environments? What abilities would be amputated?

McLuhan’s views was somewhat preceded by John Dewey. But it seems that this view is preceded by the Amish. Mcluhan espoused his views in the groovy, colourful era of the 1960s but the far from colourful Amish seems to have been asking this question as a basis for their community’s development far longer.

Some of us may remember (you have to be fairly old now) that Disney movie, “The Love Bug” (1968) which featured an old beat-up Volkswagen Beetle “race” car with a life of its own. It was so immensely popular that there has been a few follow-up movies since the original. The common thread in all these Love Bug movies was the ability of this old, far from fearsome race Beetle, to beat more powerful race machines. The Love Bug movies are typical underdog movies that American audience loves.

The Beetle (“he” is called Herbie) in the Love Bug movies reminds me a lot of PowerPoint, the much maligned software from a  much criticized software giant. PowerPoint has often been criticized among presentation software users (see here, here and here as  examples). The phrase, “Death by PowerPoint” is quite commonly heard these days too in the corporate boardrooms. This pooh-poohing of PowerPoint as a teaching tool occurs at the school level too, including in Singapore.

I remember a time when I was a consultant for the Master Plan for IT in Education (MPITE) of the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore, that some school principals did not consider the use of PowerPoint by teachers in lessons as examples of ICT integration. This, I believe, caused a lot of difficulties for teachers in Singapore who are just beginning to be introduced to the world of ICT integration for education. This is not to mention that many of these same Singapore school principals themselves are not able to string together a decent PowerPoint presentation on their own. What more with using more sophisticated ICT tools!

If we are followers of Marshall McLuhan, then we will also be aware that any medium that we use, can have an effect on us because technology has that ability to “extend” or “amputate” our abilities(see this related article about how Google affects us) .

Yet despite all that criticism, PowerPoint is still well-loved for various reasons. This may be because most computer users in the  world are Windows-based. Still, despite all its short-comings, perceived or true, PowerPoint will be around for quite awhile. There are many ways one can improve the PowerPoint presentations that we use (see ZaidLearn’s PowerPoint bookmarks here for many suggestions). Too put it simply, just don’t be a slave to PowerPoint and become dependent on its templates. You don’t even need fancy transitions for a good lesson to take place with PowerPoint.

I remember I have used PowerPoint to teach History in Singapore schools and I have had students who usually are disinterested wanting to move their chairs and even sitting on the floor to be closer to the screen and the sound source during my lessons. As an example, I used to show lots of pictures of the last Tsar, to give my students an idea of what he represented (or at least he tried to present himself) to his subjects then. I did my best then not to teach from the textbooks. I would simply show the Tsar in his military uniforms and would ask my students questions about him. Why did he wear military uniforms? I would show a painting of his coronation (there is also a video footage of his coronation) and ask them to study the painting and asked them who was present and why. Or why he placed the crown on his own head. I would also show a painting of him blessing his kneeling soldiers at a battlefield during World War I and ask my students why was he doing that. I would also show them the lyrics of the Tsarist anthem and play the actual anthem and ask them about the music. What kind of music did it remind them of? Why? I would ask them to study the lyrics too and ask them what they can learn about the Tsar from it. Just simply doing these with PowerPoint and asking good questions would get my students thinking about the Tsar. They become actively involved in the presentation. They construct their knowledge through making inferences and using other thinking skills. The teachers job is to ask them questions and get them to think. Here ICT is integrated into the lesson and thinking skills is infused into the lesson with the help of good ICT use.

For a teacher, it is still good teaching methodology, assisted and enhanced by a piece of technology, the multimedia capability of PowerPoint, that is going to win the day. PowerPoint only becomes bad only if we put PowerPoint first and then adapt our teaching to what we think PowerPoint can do. It is made worse if we use the standard templates and use them like a crutch. Like Herbie, The Love Bug, despite all its apparent deficiencies and beat-up appearance compared to the newer kids on the block, PowerPoint, the underdog of presentation software today, is still much loved and is here to stay for awhile more. It can still have its day, if placed in the hands of the right person.

When I was a consultant for a school in Bandung, Indonesia, a parent came up to me for a short chat. His children had been raised in Australia and were adjusting to the school they were in. He told me that his daughter had asked him why she had had to learn the Sundanese language and whether it would be useful later when she joins the workforce. He said that he told his daughter that he did not think it was important to learn Sundanese. He went on to say that there were many things that she had to learn in school that was not important for later employment. He told me, almost apologetically, that he had always tried to be honest with his children. I knew he was right then because here was a man who has been out working in the real world, and he knew that much of what is taught in schools today would have very little relevance to the real world.

In my last posting, “Where are we heading?”, I suggested that perhaps most schools are not doing a good job of preparing students to be part of the real world; to be part of the future work force. Much of the skills that are required in the future workplace like “abstract reasoning, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration, attributes associated with so-called “knowledge work”, are seldom consciously taught and emphasized in many, if not most, of schools today. These skills require students to “do” not just sit, listen, memorize and regurgitate.

Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase, “The medium is the message”, in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,  advocated what Dewey had already advocated before, and that is we learn what we do. When McLuhan said that the medium is the message he meant controversially that the medium in which we function will determine what we learn and not the content. For example if in a Geography classroom the teacher lectures the class about plate tectonics, Marshall would contend that what is learnt by the students in the class is not plate tectonics but obedience and deference to authority. This is because that is all that the students do in the class (the medium). McLuhan would probably argue that it is fallacious to say that schools today teach anything else except obedience and deference to authority.

If McLuhan’s (and Dewey’s) argument is correct, then even more so that the current and most pervasive model of teaching in use schools today is in need of a great overhaul. Where is the abstract reasoning that is asked for of the student today? Where is the problem-solving? Where is the communication and collaboration? Even in Singapore, a country that is often lauded for the success of the education system, such skills are seldom taught or students are seldom put into situations that require the use of such skills in the school setting.

One may ask if these skills are student-friendly or to put it another way, are students able to function in a school that emphasizes the use of such skills? Perhaps some clues can be found in the way that students interact with their peers today. Just look at the social networking, blogging and instant messaging phenomena that is so popular with teenagers today. What are the skills that we see teenagers using when they interact with their friends and peers from all over the world? I believe schools can take learn from this world wide need to communicate and collaborate. If teenagers today learn the skills of the future workforce today it is most likely not from schools but from their peers online.