Teaching about Technology

Dr. Phil Nichols remembers (with mixed feelings) being a classroom English teacher when online gradebooks rolled out. “On the one hand, students always knew what their grade was. But that knowledge allowed them to focus on the grade only, not what we were learning,” he said. “Similarly, parents would log on, and if we were doing a unit with a writing assignment and I did not log a grade for a few days, I would get emails asking if we were doing anything at all.”

Before long, the school required that teachers input a specific number of grades per week. “When the company pitched the product, it was about transparency,” he said. “But in practice, I had to invent things to grade in order to keep the gradebook active, even when I was teaching something that did not need a graded assessment along the way.”

Over time, outside apps and platforms for schools multiplied exponentially, and Nichols perceived the weight of their influence. Now associate professor of English education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Nichols explores through his research the ways that technology influences public education, focusing on literacy and equity.

Nichols’ work addressing the intersection of literacy and technology has been widely recognized. He has published one book on the topic — with another edited book due out this summer. He received the National Academy of Education (NAEd) Spencer Dissertation Fellowship in 2017, the NAEd Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2022, the 2022 Early Career Achievement Award from the Literacy Research Association, and the 2024 Media Literacy Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Through complementary strands of research, Nichols examines how the concept of “innovation” is mobilized differently by competing educational stakeholders, how platform technologies (apps, software, data infrastructures) are remaking teaching and administration, and how the history of “media literacy” instruction can shed light on its uses and limits in addressing present-day challenges related to misinformation.

In an article in the Harvard Educational Review, he and his co-authors advocate for embedding technology education within the core subjects of science, social studies, and English — replacing a model of technology as an independent content area. They outline a conceptual framework to manage technology education in a world where the latest apps and gadgets “often seem to march forward at the whims of technologists, investors, and markets” with scant opportunity to consider what relationship 
we want with technology.

Their “technoskepticism” approach encourages teachers to go beyond technical know-how (tools) to analyze the systems and values related to technologies, providing a coherent vision for technology education that will easily integrate into current structures.

While addressing multiple content areas in this study, Nichols said that literacy is his “first and true love.” Literacy at its core is about communication — about reading and writing — and beyond alphabetic writing, it can also include visual and multi-media communication. 

“The commitment should be to the communicative side, to how we understand and interpret ideas,” he said. “That is the bedrock of literacy education.”

On the horizon, Nichols sees a continuation of third-party technology platforms infiltrating educational systems from administrative functions to classroom teaching. In this environment, he said, it is wise for educators to take note of how technology is changing education and stay focused on the true goal.

WEB EXTRA: THE TECHNOLOGY ICEBERG

Further reading about the Technology Iceberg from Dr. Nichols:

• Harvard Technology Press: Teaching About Technology in Schools Through Technoskeptical Inquiry in Harvard Technology Press
• Civics of Technology: Introducing the Technology Education Iceberg
• KAPPAN: Talking the Technology Talk

Dr. Nichols and co-authors explain the Technology Iceberg for teachers:

The iceberg framework consists of three dimensions of technology that can be explored at different levels of depth.

The technical dimension includes how technologies are made and how they function, ideas often addressed in science/STEM classes as well as coding or robotics clubs. It also can include deeper examinations of how technologies fit into larger systems of production, use, and maintenance, as well as their effects on human health and the environment.

The psycho-social dimension focuses on how technology affects how humans think and interact as individuals and communities. Students might investigate how constant access to social media affects their concentration, changes their social relationships, and influences cultures and institutions.

The political dimension concerns who makes (and ought to make) decisions about technologies, from individuals to companies to lawmakers.

For each dimension, educators might ask students to think about technologies as tools that produce direct and predictable outcomes. But to promote deeper thinking that goes beyond the surface, educators should encourage students to think of technologies as parts of systems with complex and collateral effects, and as reflecting and reinforcing values such as efficiency, freedom, power, democracy, and justice.