Why #edtech has failed to improve learning: 2023 edition

 Back in 2014 I had one of those strange moments when I suddenly found myself freed from the day to day necessities of the classroom and thrust into a space where I had time to think about pedagogy. I once had an administrator tell me, "what does pedagogy even mean anyway? It's one of those words that doesn't mean anything." I've never felt that way but perhaps that's because I've focused my career on teaching rather than getting out of the classroom at the earliest opportunity. Throughout that career I've clung to moments of pedagogical best-practice in a sea of compromises.

The main purpose of schools is to run a schedule that has students in set places at set times to the benefit of adults. You can call it daycare if you want to, many people treat it like one. Order and regularity are the primary functions of school organization, not learning; hence that astonishing observation from someone who is focused on managing it. Being a teacher committed to teaching has often put me at odds with this reality.

I hesitated to get into education for a long time because I found it a dehumanizing experience as a student.

This is the expectation people have around technology integration - it's
supposed to improve learning! But scores continue declining.

Over the Easter long weekend in 2014 I was invited down to the ASU/GSV Summit in Phoenix. Stepping out of the moribund but relatively well funded Canadian education system into the 'breaking bad' of America where teachers live just above the poverty line and everyone is fixated on common curriculum success dictated by standardized testing (you don't get to be the 25th best education system in the world by chasing pedagogy!), I wasn't sure what to expect, but there were a lot critical thinkers at this summit.

One that really rocked me was Brandon Busteed who stated (to the astonishment of everyone present)  that, "“Educational technology has failed to move the needle on either cost effectiveness or student success in the past ten years.” He then showed statistically significant drops in literacy and numeracy even as the buzz around educational technology as an answer to everything was at a fever pitch.

You'd think we'd have come around to a sensible integration of digital technology in learning nearly a decade later, but post pandemic things are even worse.

PISA Results from that time show statistically significant drops in learning. Things haven't improved even with
accelerated technology use. On top of that, COVID proved that we were unable to leverage ICT even during an emergency to preserve essential learning.

Post COVID we're in a recovery situation because we couldn't leverage technology to work through pandemic lockdowns. We had the tools but most people in education (children and adults) have no idea how to use technology to actually improve (or even provide basic) learning opportunities. On the back of forced rapid technology integration due to the pandemic, our learning outcomes have gotten even worse. Our information revolution has made data so much easier to access and manipulate, but not in education where we used digital to imitate the paper based systems we clung to long after the rest of the world had moved on.

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Looking back over a teaching career spent in the middle of an 'education technology revolution', I've been frustrated at how technology has been applied in the classroom. Coming out of information technology into education in 2004, I found that classrooms were a decade or more behind the businesses I'd just been supporting. I was even more surprised to see schools going out of their way not to engage with digital learning opportunities - banning them for the longest time before reluctantly adopting them with no training or education (for staff or students) around their use. This delay resulted in educators being LESS digitally literate than the students they serve. As a result, digitally delayed teachers weren't thinking about how edtech could enhance pedagogy because they were some of the least capable of doing so. Delaying digital integration has damaged both staff and students.

We've fumbled one of the greatest opportunities to improve education in the past century and have integrated technology so poorly that it actually reduces student success rather than amplifying it. We turned generic, paper handouts into generic, online documents, ignoring opportunities for collaboration and individualization that fluid digital information systems offer. 

That rush to imitate paper based education on screen resulted in a drop in photocopying budgets which thrilled administration, but what we lost in printing costs we more than made up for in having to buy screens for everyone (something we still struggle with). Neither way is particularly environmental, but the screen route produces more waste and uses far more energy while reducing learning outcomes in digitally illiterate classrooms where students taught on home entertainment systems can only see digital devices as toys. This shell game of showing small cost reductions moving away from paper while ignoring the massive costs of edtech has further diminished our ability to focus on pedagogical best practices. Less money in the system is less money in the system.

We're facing a generational digital skills shortage that highlights our failure to engage with digital literacy in a meaningful way. Teachers are less digitally literate than the general public because they've been working in this moribund system determined to ignore the benefits of digitally enhanced pedagogy. We have digitally oblivious teachers depending on students who have been told that they are digital natives and don't need to learn how technology works because they can turn on an X-Box. You don't need to look hard to understand why education makes such a juicy target for cyber-criminals. When I reach out in my current capacity as a cyber-focused educator I'm told by ministries of education across the country that online safety is covered in health class. Yes, you heard that right, phys-ed teachers are covering cybersecurity training for our students (or more likely skipping it).

You're seeing this reflex again now with the panic around artificial intelligence inspired by ChatGPT. Students are using it to demonstrate the learning they didn't do and teachers are using it to auto-generate the tedious and generic necessities required to keep the education system doing what it has always done. If we play our cards right no one (students or teachers) will actually be involved in education by 2030.

What we're heading towards if we continue to ignore digital pedagogy! This was made with the Dall-E 2 AI image generator using this prompt: DALL·E 2023-05-23 09.15.26 - artificial intelligence replacing human students and doing their learning for them in pixel art

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How would this educational technology revolution that never happened have gone down in a better world? We would have started integrating digital technologies as they emerged and we would have taught cross curricular digital media literacy as soon as we began using the technology in classrooms. Rather than offloading digital fluency to home life and creating a skills gap that widens inequity, we would have taken responsibility for the technology as we adopted it in a timely fashion.

As digital media literacy improved, teachers wouldn't be behind the rest of society in terms of technical fluency and would have worked towards developing digitally empowered pedagogy that uses the benefits of easily accessible and malleable information to create a radically individualized approach to learning that produced truly equitable learning outcomes for all. This targeted approach to digitally enhanced learning then streamlined our industrially inspired education system into a more efficient and agile format.

As cloud based technology emerged, these digitally fluent teachers engage data science to produce deep understandings of each student's learning journey. These personalized data clouds are leveraged to produce bespoke learning outcomes. Instead of using digital technology to imitate class based, low-resolution lessons from the age of paper, we leverage our ICT revolution to take advantage of the fluidity of digital information and engage each learner where they are at in their journey. As we move away from the old, low resolution model we start to see astonishing efficiencies in student learning.

Our schools have evolved in the past two decades from age-based 19th Century storage units to smaller, agile, digitally empowered community education centres where students work towards their own learning mastery. This individualized learning environment empowers students to take control of their own educational journey. School is no longer something being done to them but something that empowers them to better understand themselves. This system also burns a fraction of the millions of gallons of diesel the old system did shuffling students around based on their physical age.

This digitally integrated education system resiliently leverages technology empowered pedagogy to individualize and engage students across all interests and subjects. During the pandemic this education system leveraged its digital expertise to connect students, reduce social anxiety and keep learning alive by using our networked world effectively. The thought of using our digital illiteracy as an excuse to quit never crossed anyone's mind. Our resilient, digitally enhanced education systems were key to keeping students healthy and mentally well during the pandemic.

Rather than being an easy target for cybercriminals, education is fortress of cyber-fluency where staff and students demonstrate exemplary digital awareness and integration. Instead of being the most likely to click on a phishing email, teachers are the least likely to infect their own networks. Schools are community centres of excellence that support their community families and local businesses in terms of cybersecurity.

This digitally transformed education system is agile and responsive, offering learning opportunities and variations in support for every student based on a detailed understanding of their needs. As a result, resources are applied in targeted, financially effective ways  Low resolution reporting processes like report cards are a quaint memory. Learning reaches demonstrated thresholds of understanding leading students to graduate through curriculums at their own pace. Parents can access this data in real time and are partners in their child's learning rather than arms-length critics. Some students graduate in their early teens, others later, but everyone would graduate with mastery knowledge of the fundamentals, especially including the digital fluency needed to succeed in the world beyond school. Instead of lamenting a digital skills crisis, Canada grows its own digitally expertise instead of emigrating digital talent in to keep up.

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To summarize:

• Education delayed engaging with digital technology for as long as it possibly could, putting it and everyone in it at a distinct disadvantage in the modern world. This frustrates parents and anyone else outside of education systems to no end.
• The delay in digital engagement has resulted in entire generations of teachers and students who are less digitally literate than the general population.
• When digital adoption finally took hold, education used it to replicate the same lack of individualization that characterized the paper based learning that proceeded it.
• Technology integration in the classroom depends on digital familiarity at home because many teachers are less digitally familiar than the general population and most schools still struggle to provide equitable access to hardware.
• The digital divide has grown because of this 'leave it to the parents' approach because some simply can't provide this essential media literacy.
• Classroom management headaches due to students misunderstanding that digital technology is a tool and not a toy are the direct result of this approach.

I was listening to CBC's The House a few weekends ago. In it Scott Brison described the federal service as "offering BlockBuster service to a Netflix clientele". We've been Dancing in the Datasphere in an ongoing information revolution for over two decades. Education has missed opportunity after opportunity to meaningfully engage with technology itself and the digitally enhanced pedagogy that should have grown from it. As it falls behind, our schools feel less and less relevant to the society they claim to serve.  As Brison suggested on Day Six, education isn't the only government service struggling to integrate technology in a manner that citizens have come to expect. It's particularly impactful in education because we're hurting the people who need digital fluency the most: students facing a future immersed in it.

Instead of developing coherent digitally enhanced pedagogies and designing our schools around them, we use technology to stuff as many students as possible into an eLearning class that most of them don't have the digital fluency to navigate. The eLearning course will likely be created using paper based, classrooms lessons converted to a digital format. If technology is engaged with at all it's usually as a way to save money, but never to rethink how we might produce better learning outcomes.

There are a small number of subject specialists and educators who have worked hard to engage in a meaningful adoption of technology to improve learning, but these people and their organizations are underfunded and vanishingly rare in the educational landscape. In fact, because of the privatization of education technology engagement in schools (when you're digitally illiterate it's easier to hire a for profit company to come in and do it for you), many of these subject specialist organizations are evaporating.

It's never too late to start developing digital mastery in a coherent, curriculum wide context. It'll be an uphill struggle swinging one of the most backwards institutions around to catch the digital wind and sail into the future, but it could still be done...

How To DIY Your Way To Digital Fluency

 "We've all become used to thinking of Gen Z as the first truly “digital native” generation. They were born when the internet was available to everyone and don’t remember a time when it wasn’t normal to carry a smartphone wherever they go and document their lives on TikTok and Instagram. Unfortunately, it turns out that this form of digital native might not translate to being able to work with the tools and technologies that are expected to shape the 21st century."

- Is Our Digital Future At Risk Because Of The Gen Z Skills Gap?

The digital skills gap is an ongoing concern, but in building a successful digital skilling program over the past two decades I've trial and errored my way to an efficient process for getting students from thinking they have digital fluency to actually having it. Here's how:

Step 1: Start Where People Are Most Familiar (I.T.!)

Information Technology (or I.T.) is where most people have regular contact with digital technology, though many people don't know what I.T. stands for. The devices we live our lives on in 2023 all depend on digital infrastructure and incredible engineering to do what they do. To unpack all that and make people aware of how this technology works, you build it!

RCT Ontario is the local branch of the Computers For Schools national program that takes off-lease technology and gives it to schools and others in need. They are all you need to get hands on with digital technology. I've found that building a desktop computer from scratch is a great way to get past the bluster of self-professed computer experts (aka: students who have been told they are digital natives) and let them show what they actually know.

All digital technology follows the same basic foundation of hardware, firmware, operating system, software. The desktop is a modular, relatively easy to assemble example of this architecture, but everything from laptops to smartphones to ATMs to Teslas uses the same stuff in the same way.

By building their own PCs from scratch, students who have some experience fill in gaps and students with no tech background find that they have a clear understanding based on hands-on familiarity. This also does a lot to clear away misconceptions and myths around digital tech (like that digital native one).

Another good resource is PC Part Picker that lets students theorize their perfect PC. Once they have an understanding of the hardware and how it goes together, suddenly customization becomes a possibility and the generic tech that most people live with isn't enough. Many of my grade 9s have built their own PC at home by the time I see them again in grade 10.

Cisco's I.T. Essentials course is available for free on Netacademy and offers media rich, current online learning support for this hands on I.T. exploration. It also makes students aware of the world of industry certifications out there in information technology. Students starting in I.T. Essentials can work towards their CompTIA A+ computer technician certification which is the first step towards moving in many directions in the industry.

Once everyone has their hardware worked out, it's time to get into operating systems. Like I.T. hardware, people have experience with OSes but seldom get under the hood. A good way to expand familiarity and get students interested in OS options is to have them build a multi-boot system on their DIYed PCs.

Our record OS stacks in grade 9 had many operating systems ranging from various versions of Windows (XP, 7, 8, 10, server, etc) along with multiple Linux distributions (an OS most students haven't touched but one that runs behind a lot of the tech we use) all bootable off one desktop. Familiarity with many different operating systems is a powerful step forward from the 'we just use Chromebooks' approach many schools have adopted (Chrome OS is actually a version of Linux).

We can usually do the PC builds and OS stacks in a week of classes (about 6 hours of instructional time). In an intensive course you could get everyone hands-on and familiar with the architecture of computers and operating systems in a day (6-7 hours).

Step 2: Use Your DIY Tech To Scale Down and Explore Electronics & Coding With Arduino

The Arduino micro-controller is a simple digital device that does a great job of showing the basics of how computer code performs with hardware. It also introduces students to circuits and the electronics fundamentals that drive all digital technology.

Arduino is open-source (like Linux) and doesn't usually come in a pre-fabricated activity/kit from your friendly neighborhood edtech for-profit with pre-set lessons and learning outcomes (a sure way to fail at developing real digital fluency).

With relatively small outlay you can collect together Arduino microcontrollers and basic electronics like LEDs and resistors and facilitate a hands-on understanding of the electronics that make the modern world work. Kits with many parts cost less than $80 and if you're crafty, far less). We always used Abra Electronics in Montreal to keep it Canadian.

There are piles of Arduino projects that students can try, but we always worked through the ARDX Arduino circuits to get everyone familiar with how breadboards and circuits work first. The Arduino plugs into the student-built desktops with a USB cable and then runs software that lets students explore both coding and circuit building in a very real way.

This is another area where the bluster gets cleared away by demonstrated mastery. If a student tells me they already know all about electronics, I tell them that they only have to do circuit number five and then can go right into designing their own project. A few can show what they claim to know, but many struggle and then I gently redirect them to doing the circuits as a 'refresher'. By the end of the Arduino unit everyone has tactile knowledge of the basics in circuit building and coding.

Introducing Arduino and running through the basic circuits typically takes about a week of high school classes, so it would be another day (6-7 hours) if students were in focused training to quickly develop these real digital fluencies.

Step 3: Use Your DIY Tech to Scale Up And Explore Connectivity & Networking

To get students the Arduino software and access to circuits on their desktops, you would have to connect them to the internet. After Arduino, students are more comfortable with their PCs and how they work, so it's time to go upstream and tackle networking!

This is another intimate aspect of people's lives that is often misunderstood. By having students build local networks with each other's machines and pass data across, they again benefit from direct, tactile, experiential learning.

We then connect these local networks together into a class-wide network and watch data travel across it in real time, but the favourite part is stress testing the network to see how much data it can handle. Tools like LOIC (low orbit ion canon!) can be used to DDOS machines off the network by overloading them with data. At this point complex, multi-disciplinary specialities in digital technologies (like cybersecurity) start to glimmer in the distance. Anyone trying to teach cyber with none of these foundational understandings in place is going to have trouble.

Another good stress test is to set up an older LAN based game which requires inputting IP addresses and other details. It's not often students have playing a multi-player game as a classroom learning target. You can guess how popular that is.

Tools wise, Cisco offers their Packet Tracer network simulator for free (you can become a Cisco Network Academy at no cost, which makes dozens of introductory ICT, networking and coding courses available). Packet Tracer lets students build complex theoretical networks and then push data through them to see if and how they work.

The networking unit typically takes another week of high school classes, so could be managed in a single 6-7 hour day. By the end of it students are experimenting with their DIY desktops on their DIY networks. The learning doesn't get any more genuine than this and the result is students who are tangibly developing real digital fluency.

Step 4: Use Your DIY Tech to Explore Data Management and Programming 

In the high school junior grades we focus on Javascript and HTML (both common web-focused coding languages). HTML works well as it allows students to quickly understand how the webpages they spend so much time on are displayed. Javascript is helpful because it allows webpages to run executable scripts and hints at the complexity modern webpages are capable of. LIke the other steps, the point here is to get behind the curtain and begin to make students aware of how the technology they are codependent on works.

Students can create and share simple HTML webpages on their network giving them a hands-on introduction to internet architecture. W3 Schools does a great intro to HTML and Javascript (and CSS and HTML5). The point isn't to create a web developer in a day, but to (once again) develop tactile familiarity with digital technologies that have always been hidden.

Coding takes time to develop, but an introduction to web design typically takes about a week to get students to the point where they know enough syntax to build a simple webpage. What's nice about HTML is that it's a tight feedback loop; you put in a command and immediately see the result.

With webpages rattling around your DIY network, you can talk about ports and how they work, and even get into online databases which tears the cover off one of the biggest problems we face: cloud based personal data. Each layer of this learning builds on the previous ones creating a rich ecosystem of interrelated technologies. Getting newly digitally fluent students to actually understand how the online world we all spend our time in works is where you want people if they want to take a run at cybersecurity with anything like the necessary context.

When you've got digital fluency you can chase down
NASA complex projects! Here CyberTitans Vlad &
Wyatt (also a 2x Skills Ontario medalist in IT &
Networking) are building a Beowulf supercomputer
...out of ewaste!

Step 5: PLAY!

I'd run this in adult up-skilling as an intensive week of digital fluency training. The final day would be a student directed mini-project. For those who dug PC building, they can build something to a specific purpose. For those who dug the Arduino and electronics, opportunities to build original circuits and code await, and for those intrepid few who enjoyed networking and data management and programming, they can chase down more complex connectivity or web development.

When I did my A+ training way back during Y2K it was an intensive week which gave me enough context to chase down my certification in a few months of practice and study. I've had a few students manage to get A+ certified as a computer technician while still in high school, but it's a challenge due to the breadth of material. I.T. techs need to be familiar with older tech and emerging tech as well as what's current. That experience takes time, which is why my seniors do in-school I.T. support. Being dropped into real world technology complications helps them hone the skills they need to be effective technicians. The purpose of this as an upskilling course would be to create contextual understandings that are simply missing for the vast majority when it comes to 'tech'.

Why Do this?

This level of hands-on technical familiarity would revolutionize elearning and make it a viable education tool. Digitally fluent staff and students would make us lock-down resilient and capable of keeping learning alive in difficult circumstances instead of giving up and leaving students behind, and it would only take 35-40 instructional hours. Many adults use digital technology habitually and in profound ignorance. An intensive week of hands on learning would end that approach and give everyone the context they need to move with purpose in our digitized society.

When I see Ontario dedicating time to mandatory historical curriculum I shake my head. This kind of digital fluency would enable pretty much every career pathway and give students essential 21st Century life skills (you don't want digitally illiterate people participating in a technology enabled democracy). Instead we cling to mandatory curriculum designed in the age before our digital revolution. We could be producing digitally competent students that close the digital skills gap, and it's not like it's expensive or time consuming. All that it takes to solve this problem is to solve this problem.

For those tackling adult re-skilling, I see a lot of cybersecurity 'bootcamps' that assume much of this digital fluency in their candidates (like K-12 does) and then wonder why their dropout rates are so high. Cybersecurity is a multi-disciplinary specialization within ICT and you can't get to it directly any more than you can expect an illiterate adult to tackle Shakespeare. You need foundational skills and contextual understandings before you take on that kind of complexity. It isn't an impossible ask, but it is one that needs to start from where people are at, which is further back than we think they are.

How to Build Digital Fluency Before Tackling Cybersecurity

Follow Up Links

The Digital Divide is Deep and Wide (2017): https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-digital-divide-is-deep-and-wide.html

How to Pivot Ontario Education to Prepare for The Next Wave (we didn't): https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2020/05/how-to-pivot-ontario-education-to.html

Exceptional Times: Using a Pandemic to Close the Digital Divide (any day now): https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/exceptional-times.html

Why Canadian Education is so Reluctant to Move on Digital Literacy (hard to teach it when you don't have it either): https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2023/02/why-canadian-education-is-so-reluctant.html

And Now For Something Complete Different: Quantum Computing

 If you're not paying attention to quantum technology development, you're missing out on the most exciting tech evolutions happening. Quantum computers are still in development, but as MIT suggests, "Thanks to some recent breakthroughs, aggressive roadmapping, and high levels of funding, we may see general-purpose quantum computers earlier than many would have anticipated just a few years ago".

Had I remained in the classroom this year I would have been building a library of quantum computing resources that I could introduce to my seniors in hopes that some of them might consider it as a viable (and much supported) pathway in their post-secondary journey. But I'm not in the classroom, so I'm considering quantum on a much bigger scale, ideally a national one where I can connect educators to accessible quantum technology learning opportunities for students both in STEM and in non-technical fields of study.

Back in January, the Minister of Innovation, Science & Economic Development for Canada (ISED), François-Philippe Champagne, announced Canada's Quantum Strategy. Looking past the ambition in the announcement, Champagne described Quantum as "...not vertical, it’s horizontal. Like AI, it is going to have an impact on everything.” This emphasizes the breadth of this new discipline even more than the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.

When electronic computers caught on at the end of the Second World War an industry needed to grow up around them to support their rapid development. There will certainly be a need for quantum algorithm creators who emigrate out of traditional computer science programs to explore this new and quite different form of programming, and there will be a need for engineers to design the complex systems needed to create stable superpositioned qubits at near absolute zero temperatures in environments screened from all interference. But there will also be places for human resources professionals, marketing types and other personnel who need a working understanding of quantum technologies in order to understand the business model and support the engineering needed to make it happen.

Pathways development in information and communications technologies are what I'm working in at the moment and ignoring quantum possibilities, especially with the resources being poured into it and the rapid improvement it has prompted would be short sighted. As I said to open, had I still been teaching in class I would be introducing my graduates to quantum computing so that they can consider it moving forward.

Being in a strategic position this year, I'm concerned with finding a way of introducing quantum opportunities to a wider range of students. Business students need to understand what fundamentals quantum requires in order to keep the lights on. Communications students need to wrap their heads around the tech, at least enough to be able to be able to create accurate outreach for it, and educators need to be aware of it because it's a multi-billion dollar industry that's about to get even bigger.

To that end, here are some quantum learning opportunities. Keep this on your radar! Your students will appreciate the heads-up.

Quantum learning resources for your classroom:

Jan, 2023: GOVERNMENT OF CANADA REVEALS PLANS FOR $360 MILLION NATIONAL QUANTUM STRATEGY

Jan, 2023: MIT: What’s next for quantum computing

Time: https://time.com/6249784/quantum-computing-revolution/

2020: Business: What quantum computing could mean for customer experience

2020: Quantum computing and quantum supremacy, explained

What a quantum computer is and online mini-games that help explain it: http://quantum-hub.herokuapp.com

An open source quantum programming online learning opportunity: https://qiskit.org/ Coding in quantum looks more like circuit design than what people traditionally think of programming.

Canada’s National Quantum Strategy: https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/national-quantum-strategy/en/canadas-national-quantum-strategy

9 Industries at Risk from Y2Q: https://www.spiceworks.com/it-security/security-general/guest-article/post-quantum-cryptography-nine-industries-at-risk-from-y2q/

2022 Summer, Quantum Progress: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2022/7/quantum-computing-current-progress-and-future-directions

Digital Supercluster Quantum K-12 Program: https://www.digitalsupercluster.ca/projects/diversifying-talent-in-quantum-computing/

UBC Quantum Resource Hub: http://quantum-hub.herokuapp.com/app/sudoku

DTQC: https://quantum-hub.herokuapp.com/ Quantum resource hub

Quantum Arcade: https://quantum-hub.herokuapp.com/arcade

Quantum Playground: https://www.quantumplayground.net/#/home

Quantum Examples (summer ’22): https://builtin.com/hardware/quantum-computing-applications

Quantum Computing & Sims for Energy Applications: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsengineeringau.1c00033

Time to take quantum-safe cryptography seriously: https://research.ibm.com/blog/quantum-safe-cryptography-for-industry Major implications for cybersecurity with quantum development.

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The STEM skills gap will be stretched wider if we don't start addressing emerging technologies such as quantum and artificial intelligence as well as catching up on other subjects:

Canada’s STEM student gap: https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/canada-faces-a-shortage-in-digital-and-stem-skills-says-c-d-howe-institute-report/499628

Why Canadian Education is so Reluctant to Engage with Digital Literacy

https://troymedia.com/education/canada-faces-a-serious-shortage-of-stem-skills/

https://c2cjournal.ca/2022/11/canadas-stem-education-gap-the-need-for-more-science-based-professionals/

The New Creativity: how AI will empower learning, if we let it.

Computers Are Like Pizzas

I'm currently working with partners developing curriculum that creates an understanding of how computers work. The challenge is in getting adult focused instructional designers to recognize the enormous gaps students have in terms of their understanding of computer technology. Digitally fluent adults assume young people have an intuitive understanding of how these machines work, but they don't. If you assume this you end up with frustrated and confused students.

We rolled back initial lessons to the point where we're introducing students to how computers store local files, but even that wasn't far enough. With no coherent digital skills curriculum in our schools, you have to clear away a lot of misconceptions and back up the truck all the way before you can start building a coherent understanding of how digital technology works. As in the case of most problems, thinking about pizza helps...

Only Old People Use Computers...

 'Wait a minute!' you say. 'I'm super cool! I don't use old fashioned things like computers! I'm a digital native who lives on their phone.'

Newsflash! Smartphones are computers! So are tablets, Chromebooks, laptops, desktops, IoT devices like your smart thermostat or the Alexa that's listening all the time. Because they're all fundamentally the same thing, you can understand and fix them when they go wrong. You're using a computer to read this right now, it just might not look like one.

ALL COMPUTERS ARE LIKE A PIZZA

If you think about pizza when you're diagnosing a computer (which might look like a phone, car fuel injection system, laptop or smart fridge), it helps you to isolate where the problem is and clarifies what you need to do to fix it. All electronic computers share the same fundamental components, and those components are pizza-licious!

The Dough: HARDWARE

This is the part of the pizza that can look very different. The physical shell we put a computer in can range in size from a smartwatch to building-sized supercomputers. Generally, the smaller they are the slower they are because electronic computing generates heat and that's hard to get rid of when you can't install fans and other cooling stuff to get the heat out and let the processor run at top speed.

That's why desktops always feel faster than laptops. Their architecture can be designed for speed because engineers can get rid of the heat made from running a processor fast. Mobile processors are often throttled down desktop hardware. Even smaller computers tend to be specialists only having to do a few tasks that engineers can optimize the hardware for. Phones can only run certain apps, watches are even more limited and single function computers like ATMs or smart thermostats can optimize all of their hardware to a single task.

If you're having hardware headaches, like a computer overheating and locking up, you can fix it like a mechanic, with tools (and thermal paste) and some physical attention. If you get handy enough, you can even start building your own crusts.

The Sauce: FIRMWARE

Computer hardware doesn't know what it is - it's just STUFF. When you first power up a computer (phone, desktop whatever), you often see text appear for a second and then disappear. That's the saucy FIRMWARE. Firmware is software that's written onto a chip in the computer that tells it what kind of hardware its running on. 

Firmware is sometimes called BIOS, which stands for Basic Input/Output System - which is literally what it is; software that tells the computer what hardware it has that takes care of inputting and outputting data. UEFI replaced BIOS on modern computers, but it's just a fancy BIOS with graphics that make it easier to navigate. It's pointless acronym creep like this that puts people off learning about computers!

The Cheese: OPERATING SYSTEMS

On top of the firmware sauce you have the cheesy OPERATING SYSTEM. You've seen logos for them for years, but probably don't give them much thought. If you're a PC type person you'll have seen Windows evolve through XP, 7. 8. 10 and now Windows 11 versions. Apple people know OSx (Operating System 10), and if you know any nerds they'll tell you about Linux - the free, open source operating system that gives you great power to modify.

OSes are the software that span the gap between users and the machine itself. OSes have a lot of work to do running an incredible variety of applications, some of it very poorly made, without crashing, though sometimes they do. OSes have to integrate all the different input methods (touchscreen, mouse, trackpad, keyboard, etc) and all the possible output methods like screens, printers, haptic feedback or even the LED lights on the computer itself. Juggling all of that hardware and software, all of it engineered to different standards and coded with varying levels of skill, is a mighty task, though that doesn't stop people from ripping on the cheesy OS...

Apple came up with a series of Mac vs. PC ads back in the day. Someone came up with the parody above - it's funny, but the stretch operating systems have to do to bridge the gap between clueless users and complex layers of hardware and software is a massive.

It's in the cheese of operating systems where you run into a lot of headaches, unless you make a computer so absurdly simple that it can only do one thing. Rather than learn the complexity computers are capable of in order to leverage the flexibility of a general purpose machine, we've surged toward simplicity. It started with Apple's 'walled garden' approach to iOS, where apps must comply with (and pay for) strict standards. This allowed the iPhone to create a larger user base because it simply worked - just not in as many ways as it might.

Android came along with a more open approach and took back some market share, but most people would rather do less if it means not having to learn anything about computers. Nowhere is this better shown than with Chromebooks. Chrome OS that runs on a Chromebook is actually a flavour of Linux designed to give you only a browser. They're great because you can barely do anything with them and they're easy to manage - which is why we use them in schools to teach digital fluency.

Of course, if you're crafty you can work around all these blocks. You can 'jail break' Android and iOS phones to allow you to update the OS (many  companies freeze you out of updates after a couple of years in order to force you to buy a new device). Jail breaking usually involves finding a hacked firmware (remember the sauce?) that has removed any locks on what kind of OS can be installed. You overwrite the official firmware with deristricted firmware sauce and then you can keep updating your Android or iOS versions or install software on the device that the manufacturer blocked.

The Toppings: APPLICATIONS and PROGRAMS

A pizza wouldn't be a pizza without some toppings that customize it to your taste. When you first start up a new computer it's a plain cheese pizza. Your dough (hardware) powers up and runs your sauce (firmware), which makes the computer aware of its hardware and then hands it all off to the cheese (operating system), which loads you into a plain pizza starting environment.

If you've got any problems that prevent you from getting to your OS starting screen then you know where to look in the boot process to solve the problem. If the machine doesn't power up, you'll be working with the dough. If it powers up but gets stuck in a text screen before the OS logo appears, you're focusing on the sauce. If the OS logo appears but you don't get to the start screen, you're fixing the cheese.

 As you customize your pizza computer to your needs, you install apps adding another layer of complexity to your poor old operating system. Generally, the longer a computer has been with a user, the more toppings they've piled on. This gets complicated by apps and operating systems getting out of date, then you might have rotten toppings wrecking your otherwise yummy pizza. You've got to keep your toppings (OS cheese and even your FIRMWARE sauce) up to date or you can end up with problems. The vast majority of pizza lovers aren't very good at looking after their cheese wheels, which makes hackers very happy.

If you really like pizza, you'll make your own...

These PC pizzas were just coming into being when I was growing up in the 1980s. Early machines came complete as a 'deluxe pizza' with the crust, sauce and cheese all per-selected for me. My first two PCs, a Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64, offered crust upgrades (memory I could plug into the expansion port), and gave me control of the toppings, which we quickly learned how to customize.

In the late 80s/early 90s I got into i386 IBM clone computers. This was my first go at a truly DIY pizza PC. I got to select components to customize my crust, the sauce firmware comes with the hardware, but then I could pick my OS cheese too. I haven't owned a 'deluxe' pre-made pizza PC since. My current desktop is a custom case I selected for its big fans so that it runs quick, cool and quiet (it also happens to look like the bat mobile). To that I added a high-speed motherboard, fast processor and lots of RAM (fast memory), so it never hesitates, even when I'm running many applications at once. A VR ready video card means my graphics are super quick and the whole thing is aimed at precisely what I want to do with it. Custom crusts are the way to go.

For the cheese I always install multiple operating systems. Right after my firmware sauce finishes it gives me a menu that lets me choose between many different OS cheeses depending on what I want to do.  My desktop will boot into two versions of Windows, three versions of LInux (each customized for a specific task) and it even 'hackintoshes' if I need to test something in an Apple environment. My pizzaPC changes its cheese based on what I need it to do!

The Pre-made Pizza Dilemma: DELUXE PIZZAS USUALLY AREN'T

The urge to Chromebook us has always been with us. The 'game system' industry is a Chromebook for games. Pre-selected crust, sauce and cheese lead to a limited selection of toppings (games), but this simplification and one trick pony reduction of multi-purpose computers into toys is where the money is, though as educators I think it's incumbent upon us to use technology responsibly, and that means not using it in ignorance.

When we simplify computers to satisfy simple people needs, we end up even more oblivious to how they work. When I first started teaching computer technology in high school, I could assume my incoming grade 9s knew how to navigate file management in a computer (that's deep in the cheese). But as Chromebooks took over I realized that (thanks to cloud based everything), students had lost their understanding of how local files are stored. If we roll back our digital skills curriculum and start at the beginning, we can begin to build digitally fluent graduates who won't fall into a digital skills gap the moment they leave our schools.

 

RESOURCES IF YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR OWN PIZZA PC

If you're curious about customizing your own pizza PC, PC Parts Picker is a great place to start. Once you realize what's available in terms of doughy hardware and what you can do with your cheesy operating systems, computers suddenly turn from something you barely understand (even though you use them every day) to a tool that you can fix and customize to your needs.

Here is the lesson plan we work from when I introduce students to computer architecture.

But the best possible way to get these concepts across to students is to have them build desktops with their own hands and you can do this FOR FREE! Find the COMPUTERS FOR SCHOOLS program in your province and they will happily provide you with computer hardware to DIY your PC builds. I've worked with RCT Ontario for many years and they are fantastic, providing teachers who want to build genuine technology fluency in a hands on way.

Students love building their own machines, but the best part is the EQUITY and INCLUSION it enables. For students who don't have a computer at home, they can build one and then take it home knowing how it works and how to fix it, making this one of very few times where the education system is actually closing rather than widening the digital divide.

The Digital Divide is Deep & Wide

Using the Pandemic to Close the Digital Divide

 How to Pivot Ontario Education to Prepare for The Next Wave 

Why Canadian Education is so Reluctant to Move on Digital Literacy