A Call for Technological Fluency in Education

Many people today are computer literate. They use computers to communicate with others, prepare documents for work or class and look up information on the Internet. However, few people use computers to their full capacity, and so most people can not be considered truly fluent in technology. In 1991, the National Research Council (NRC) outlined specific ways that educators can help develop fluency with information technology or “FITness” (NRC, 1999). The NRC feels that becoming skillful in computer applications (word processing, etc.) does not prepare students to keep up with the fast pace of technological change. Instead, the NRC advocates teaching children eight “essential elements of FITness” including “managing complexity, testing solutions, managing problems in faulty solutions, organizing/evaluating information, collaborating with others and communicating results” using primarily project-based learning (NRC, 1999). The NRC believes that students need to learn how to use the full power of computers to synthesize and organize new information in order to be successful in the technological world of the future.

Mitchell Resnick goes beyond this goal of enhancing “FITness,” and calls for a full transformation of the current educational system. He feels that education should focus “less on ‘things to know’ and more on ‘strategies for learning the things you don’t know’” (Resnick, 2001, p. 60). He feels that helping students become better learners is crucial to helping them keep up with the potentials of new technologies yet to be developed. He feels that “the computer is the most extraordinary construction material ever invented” and that current computers are “greatly expanding what people can create and what they can learn in the process” (p. 48). He outlines several of MIT's programs that have successfully enhanced technological fluency and warns against using computers “simply to reinforce outmoded approaches to learning” (p. 45). Instead, he calls for a more “entrepreneurial approach to learning” with the teacher serving as a consultant, not as a chief executive” (p. 59).

As an obvious constructionist (“people don’t get ideas, they make them” (Resnick, 2001, p. 47)), Dr Resnick feels that the natural curiosity and creativity of childhood need to be nurtured and developed so that children are more likely to become lifelong learners open to new knowledge and new ways of processing it. He worries that the focus of educators and policy makers has been on closing the “accessibility gap” by getting more computers into the schools for all the students to use. Meanwhile very little is being done to prevent development of a “fluency gap” (p. 49). He fears that if we do not change our teaching to enhance technological fluency, students will fail to “construct things of significance with digital technology” (p. 49). In other words, our educational systems and methods will have shortchanged the potential of this media.

[References]

National Research Council (NRC), 1999. Being Fluent with Information Technology. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. As retrieved on 11/16/06 from http://www.nap.edu/books/030906399X/html/15.html

Resnick, M. (2001). Revolutionizing learning in the digital age. Publications from the forum for the future of higher education. Boulder, CO: Educause.
Available online at http://www.educause.com/reources