Some schools operate in a bit of a tech paradox.   Use tech to help students with special needs or disability, EAL students, or simply to support collaboration, critical thinking, communication and creativity, while at the same time banning technology due to the risks related to online content, or the evils of screentime.   For example, many schools are banning mobile phones or at least smart phones.   But in a world of evolving technology and slow evolving school policy, are we always going to be behind the curve?

Banning Phones, but what next?

Am not going to discuss banning phones here as I have written enough on it in the past.    Needless to say my view is that we should seek to manage rather than banning phones, and in schools with limited technology available, why wouldn’t you seek to use such a valuable and flexible bit of kit which the kids just happen to have brought with them?

The issue here though, is that we can ban phones all we want but the technology has already moved on, with more and more students bringing wearables such as smart watches into school.   Less conspicuous than a smart phone but increasingly becoming almost as powerful.   So are we going to start banning smart watches?

And even if we do, we are already seeing signs of what the next issue might be in AI powered wearables that record and monitor what a person is doing to provide insights, summaries and advice.   Quick lets make sure they are mentioned in our school policies as yet another thing which is banned, and which staff should be on the lookout for.   And what of smart pens or earpieces? We don’t seem too far away from having to provide students with a technological pat down to make sure they aren’t packing any dangerous smart devices. Or maybe we need tech detecting metal detectors in the entrances to schools?

Integrated tech

More recently we have seen the issue of integrated tech where technology is integrated with other items, such as integrating camera, microphone and smart tech into a pair of glasses.   “Ban them” I hear you cry.   I can see it now, the student squinting at the board at the front of the class as their smart glasses have been confiscated.   Hold on, how would I even be able to tell they were smart glasses?   I also wonder what other items might have smart tech integrated with it.   Maybe smart earrings?   We already have smart rings…..hold on does that mean we have to ban rings too?

Thinking to the future

It all gets a bit worse if we look even further forward and start to consider cybernetics.   What if a students failing or failed eyesight in their left eye is addressed through a smart implant.   Do they need to take their eye out for exams?     Or a student with motor control has some sort of haptic device to help them, do they need to take it off for exams?   What if the student has some sort of brain implant to augment their capabilities; where would we stand with that?

Conclusion

Our thinking to date has, in my opinion, tended towards being focussed on the short term, as well as reactive.   We don’t know how to manage phones or smart watches, so lets ban them.  But this doesn’t deal with the problem, and in fact misses some of the potential benefits which might exist.   It also just kicks the can down the road a little until we need to ban the next thing, and the next thing, adding more and more to our policies and guidelines, and to the checking people need to do to ensure students are complying with the increasingly complex rules.  

Instead, couldn’t we look forward, and consider the increasingly likelihood of wearables, or integrated tech and even of cybernetics.    Maybe there is another way other than banning, which would allow for the kit to be safely and responsibly used. With this as the context it seems inappropriate and even a bit silly to be looking to ban tech.  Instead maybe we need to step back and consider education and learning, and how it might need to evolve in a world of evolving technology.