Can Students Be Makers When Teachers Are Consumers?
2 min read
I recently came across a discussion initiated by a technology director in the first year of an iPad rollout. The release of iOS5 rendered some key apps inoperable; due to how Apple manages upgrades on mobile hardware, it can be difficult to adequately test new software, let alone schedule a bulk upgrade.
Given that pieces of an academic program can be rendered inoperable via an upgrade you are not empowered to stop/opt out of, how reliable do iPads feel?
While most of these upgrades are painless, do the opportunities offered by an iPad justify having the release schedule of an external company potentially trump or disrupt the schedules you, your teachers, and your students have worked out?
I'm definitely not advocating a return to a centralized, fully controlled environment, but just as I wouldn't tolerate anyone coming in and painting my kitchen without asking, I have an equally hard time being told that I have no say over the environment of a piece of hardware I (theoretically) own.
So, if we own the hardware we use to create, and someone else controls access to the tools we use to create, where does that leave us with respect to ownership of our creative work? If the only way we can make use of the work we have created is through a device that is a closed environment with respect to hardware, running software that is beyond our reach, how can we make any claims that we have created something over which we have control? In this situation, our data is accessible to us only if we keep paying for hardware we don't control, and keep paying for software we might not need or want any more?
We encourage students to be makers and creators; these exhortations lack the strength they could have when they are based on a foundation of consuming what we are given. By using a closed system, and allowing our programs to be shaped by the whims of an entity who is completely oblivious to the day to day needs of of the programs we have laid out, we model an external locus of control.
How can we encourage students to be makers when some of our behavior models straight consumption?
Image Credit: "Lock" taken by BlackmanVision, published under an Attribution-Non Commercial - No Derivatives license.
