Bob Dylan and Tablets

‘For the times, they are a-changin', crooned Bob Dylan in the 1960’s.  As teenagers, we loved to accompany him, playing our air-guitars and blasting out the words.  We really did believe him when he assured us that the answer was blowing in the wind and all we had to do was knock (and knock) on heaven’s door.

Certainly from a technological point of view, times are changing even more rapidly fifty years later.  At a New Parents’ Evening recently, the incoming Director of Academics, Ben Thompson, told the Grade 7 parents to hold back buying tablets for their sons until the last possible moment before school starts in January to enable them to benefit from any significant technological  advances.

I don’t think for a moment that it was android tablets which Dylan had in mind in 1964.  I suspect that he would probably have agreed with the following sentiment expressed by a concerned commentator about new technology:  “This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories. People will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

Watching the intensity of boys around the school as they use their tablets, one can soon see what the commentator had in mind.  Forgetful of the surrounding company, they whiz around the cornucopia of technology with the ease of the digital natives they are.  The commentator who expressed the sentiment above, would be even more horrified if he could see the modern scenario because it was the Greek philosopher Socrates who made that astute statement  – and all he was doing was expressing his abhorrence of writing!

I wonder what he would say about Twitter, Blogs, the Internet, Podcasts, Wikis, Mxit, emails, Whatsapp and BBM’s!

Dr Albert Hertzog, as Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, expressed a similar opinion some years later in 1964 when he was talking on the subject of introducing television to South Africa. ‘Over my dead body,’ he said, ‘will this country introduce television.  It is a miniature bioscope over which parents will have no control.’  Our deprivation was brought home to us when the rest of the world watched the images of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969.  Even our small neighbour, Rhodesia, could watch it.  What made that even more galling was that their state television was reputed to be sponsored by South African businesses.  After that, Hertzog  was helpless to stem the pressure, and  with him either mortuus aut vivus, television was still able to arrive in our sitting rooms in 1976.

Personally, I think that the advance of IT in the classroom is incredibly exciting – and especially the use of tablets to enhance learning.  I cannot ever see technology taking over from the committed and enthusiastic teacher because caring human relationships are still the most important part of education. It was certainly as true in the time of Socrates  in 300BC as it is in the classrooms of Wynberg Boys’ High School in 2014.

Mastering the intricacies of technology is the easy part for our digital natives.  They will do this through self-discovery and collaborative learning which have unfortunately been largely undeveloped skills since mass education took hold as a popular concept in society.  I suspect that our Victorian-type  classrooms will undergo vast changes in appearance in the next decade. The true test for our pupils in the future will be to handle the vast amount of information available to them at the touch of a button (or a screen).  Teaching them discernment is destined to be the real challenge of modern education.

Photo (taken on a tablet) courtesy Ethan Robbertze, Grade 8

The current Grade 8’s of 2014 are a case in point.  Introduced in January to the exciting concept of tablets, they revelled in the treasure trove of information, games and alluring temptations.  Their marks plummeted.  Anxious parents were wanting to push pins into effigies of Steve Jobs and were querying the educational value of anything electronic.  It took time, but slowly the boys learnt to discern gold from dross and by September, the average marks of the Grade were comparable, and in many cases an improvement, over previous years.

It is only natural for parents to want to protect the children.  ‘Roots and Wings’ is one of my ongoing sayings and we hope that when the time comes for the first attempt at flying, parents have given their sons the roots of moral and ethical values.  If that is the case, then our boys are better prepared to make the right choices as they wing their way through adolescence and life.  Whatever else happens on this journey, our boys need to believe that they have the freedom to choose.  They will make mistakes.  They will make wrong choices.  They will visit unsavoury sites on their tablets.  They will play games when they shouldn’t.  

Schools are certainly a microcosm of the real world with the difference being that at no stage will we  adults stop checking.  We will never cease to remind our charges about the dangers of making wrong choices. Mentoring will always be ongoing – because that is our job.

As parents and teachers, we cannot wrap  and envelop our sons in monastic splendour or cloister them in the sterile air of sanitised prudery and then expect them to develop discernment and mature judgement.

The Gutenberg Press

The IT revolution is probably the most important advance for education since Johannes Gutenberg, a German blacksmith, invented the printing press in 1440. As a mobile delivery service of information, tablets, which for us are leading the education revolution, are ready and available to be used at home, in the classroom, before school, after school.   I enjoy seeing boys waiting for their parents at one of the gates engrossed in their tablets,  using their finger or a stylus as they catch up on their homework.  Tablets are enhancing the curiosity of our pupils; fostering their cognitive ability; boosting their IT skills and above all I can see their collaborative learning really being developed.  Before the advent of tablets, ‘doing homework together’ was bound to arouse the suspicion and the ire of teachers.  Now it is almost essential that our boys learn together on Skype, blogs and chat rooms.

‘It is quite amazing,’ said a parent to me in an email recently.  ‘My son and the rest of the class are engaging with their teacher at night discussing aspects of their homework.’

This is the true spirit of the ‘flipped classroom’ where academic learning must not be limited to the school hours.

Boys can no longer report back to class the next day that they ‘couldn’t understand’  a particular question  - a reaction which (before tablets!)  in the minds of adolescent boys completely vindicated the fact that they have not even attempted the question.

Our Maths Department is currently setting homework for which the pass mark is 100%. Boys can submit their answers online as soon as they have 100% - but they can attempt it as often as they like.  If they get an answer wrong, the programme gives them 0 and they then have to start again with the computer randomly giving them different figures with which to solve the same problems.  The programme also records how often a boy tries and where his major areas of misunderstanding are. What a great learning tool for teachers this is as they prepare their lessons for their next day.  The remedial possibilities are endless.

Without realising it, the boys are working over and over again on a problem – and they cannot take the easy way out and just abandon any question which demands thinking.  ‘I am not letting a computer beat me,’ said one boy to me, clearly a veteran of many computer games.

The role of teachers now changes as they embrace and welcome IT into their teaching and transform the pedagogical methods they have used for years and to help their pupils navigate through the content rather than just presenting the content.  The degree which teachers embrace this technological revolution will determine the preparedness of our boys for tertiary education.  Some tertiary institutions are now insisting that students  take notes, make scribbles, bookmark content, access links etc on tablets.

Boys laugh at me when I tell them that I learnt to write with a nib pen dipped into an inkwell in the desk.  Clearly that was in the ‘olden days’.  Well I predict a time where future schoolboys in the not-too-distant future will be laughing at the current generation when they talk about carrying bags of books to school; researching a history essay surrounded by a bevy of books; using a pen and notepaper; organising files of paper notes for every subject.

So, Bob Dylan, I am glad that times have changed as we are entering into exciting times as tablets challenge us to discover and store information in different ways.  Tablets must enhance learning.  They must make this learning stimulating and enlivening.  The days of listening to His Master’s Voice have long since gone.

There is, however, one aspect of modern times that no schoolboy of today can change – and that it is the immense primaeval satisfaction which is given to a ten year old boy when he pulls the nib full of ink back to its full extension and flicks the contents all over the backs of the boys in front of him.

Beat that, you digital natives with your tablets!