1. Tecnology in Education:
Tool for What?
Eduardo O C Chaves
Professor of Philosophy and Education
University of Campinas
Campinas, SP Brazil
eduardo@chaves.com.br

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Means and ends
“Perfection of means and confusion of goals
seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age”
(Albert Einstein)
This applies well to education today, especially
to the area of educational technology: here we
are giving much more attention to perfecting
our means than to clarifying our ends

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Means and ends in education
The reason why we have schools and, within
them, teachers, curriculum, technology and
other resources, and why we compel children
to stay in school during almost twelve years
seems to be that we hope that children will be
better educated in this environment than
outside it
But all of these things are MEANS to the END
of educating our children

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Investments and outcomes
We do know that kids simply LOVE technology
So we spend billions of dollars each year on:
Computers, software and Internet access for our
schools
Teacher training in ICT skills, technology leadership
programs, creation of digital content, development
of platforms for delivering content, etc.
And yet… we seem to have no substantial
improvement in student achievement in
standardized tests (Susan Patrick yesterday)

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Reason to stop and wonder
Kids learn to master technology without us and
much better and faster than us (as M. Prensky
said yesterday, they are digital natives” and we
are “digital immigrants” with a heavy accent)
And yet… not even with the help of technology
do kids seem to learn better the things we
want them to learn
Many people blame technology and urge that
we go back to basics and perfect our standards

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A better diagnostic
It seems evident, however, that the problem is
not in technology, but in what we want kids to
learn in school
T-shirt: “It’s not attention deficit: I am just not
listening” (apud Marc Prensky again)
Kids master technology very easily and fast
and learn to do with it very complex and even
important things – if they are only interested
in them!

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A prognostic: The Project of the Ayrton
Senna Institute and Microsoft in Brazil
To place a computer lab in 56 schools and give
kids total control over the technology
Kids manage the lab and use the equipment to
do anything they are interested in
The results have been amazingly positive:
Kids developed important communications,
decision-making and management skills
Kids engaged in projects of their interest and
learned to go after information and knowledge
necessary to implement them

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My personal role in the project
To put together a theoretical framework that
would make pedagogical sense of what we
were doing
This framework – not at all original – has been
called “Education as Human Development”

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One traditional approach to education
Education, traditionally, has been very much
concerned with delivering content: transmitting
information and knowledge to students
Either this was seen as the goal of education
(to perpetuate and reproduce a given cultural
heritage)
Or this was seen as a necessary means for
reaching some other goal (critical thinking, for
instance: to think critically is to think about
something – so, there comes content…)

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ICT
Information and Communications Technology
has rendered this concern with delivering
content, with transmitting information and
knowledge to students to a large extent futile
Information is no longer scarce and access to
knowledge is no longer difficult and restrict
We need to look for approaches to education
that fully take these facts into consideration

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A different approach to education
When they are born, human beings are
incompetent to live
But they are born with an enormous potential
to learn
Through their learning they can become not
only competent adults, but also free, rational
and (why not?) happy human beings

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The end of education
The end of education is to transform this
potential for learning, freedom, rationality and
happiness into a set of competencies
In other words: the end of education is to
transform, through THEIR learning, the
incompetent beings that are born, into fully
competent adults capable of, through their
freedom and rationality, to live and enjoy life in
the fullest sense (“flourish”)

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The role of technology
Technology, in the broadest sense, is whatever
human beings invent to make their life easier
or more enjoyable
Technology therefore includes both our tools
and our toys
Our tools have to do with our means; our toys,
with our ends!

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Recent technology
Recent technology offers us a potent set of
tools for
Gaining wider access to information
Analyzing information and transforming it into
useful knowledge for decision making and action
Increasing our capacity to communicate and
collaborate with others
But it is also an incredible source of unending
entertaining and fun (leisure)

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Technology of education
Join all that and we have a powerful resource
(tool/toy) that can significantly improve our
chances of success in the business of living and
being happy
And that is what education is all about

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Work, leisure and learning
These three are converging and making it
exceedingly difficult to classify activities in only
one of these categories
Traditionally: after work we tried to have some
fun and, perhaps, learn
Today: we find things that are fun and with
which we can learn and then try to make
money doing them
Apply this principle to education