live the questions now

One of my favorite holiday activities is the New York Cares Winter Wishes program. I sign up online, and a few days later, a letter to Santa arrives in my mailbox, with the address of a community organization that serves children in need. While I’ve occasionally received requests for winter boots in suspiciously adult handwriting, most often they ask for what they really want. This year, a twelve year old in the Bronx is getting an MP3 player to listen to music while doing her homework.

Wait! Before you jump to leaving a comment attacking me for dropping $200 on an iPod so a kid I’ve never met can be distracted from her true academic potential, hear me out, because her letter represents trends that have been growing for several years now, and have big implications for education.

Technology is becoming rapidly more affordable, and that can make it more accessible. Yes, it’s within recent memory that these were luxury items, but I found a decent MP3 player for $30, less than the suggested spending limit.

One Laptop Per Child is putting inexpensive computers in the hands of children all over the world, and while they’re not the $100 miracles they were once promised to be, they’re cheap enough that they even make a reasonable donation. They also have helped make way for competition from other laptop manufacturers, so overall prices continue to fall. While OLPC was meant to create new learning opportunities in the developing world, it has also done so here in the US. As these technologies become more accessible, parents and schools have realistic choices when they consider how to maximize the learning that their dollars provide.

Kids love technology, and it has an impact on how they learn. We tend to think of these devices for their entertainment purposes, because that’s how they’re marketed to us. But their potential as devices for learning is enormous, both in and outside the classroom.

The role of technology in education has long had its evangelists, but now, after three years of research, a new report shows just how much kids learn from their casual everyday use of technology. Look, I know she just wants to listen to music, but the recipient of this MP3 player is also getting a device that can record data and download podcasts. Computers are an amazing learning tool when you think of them in the context of the networks and information they connect their users to.

The real question isn’t whether this student’s learning will be affected by her having an MP3 player while she does her homework — teenagers have been listening to music while they study for decades. The uncertainty lies in whether the educators in her life are going to recognize the importance of technology and help her gain access to it in positive ways. She and her peers are going to learn from technology because of these trends, or despite them.