Reviews
Professional Materials

Laurie A. Henry

Julie Coiro

Jill Castek

The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved

New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning

Reviewed by Laurie A. Henry, Julie Coiro, and Jill Castek, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA.

The nature of literacy is changing as new technologies for reading, writing, and communication regularly appear (Coiro, 2003; Leu, Castek, Henry, Coiro, & McMullan, 2004). Traditional literacy skills will continue to be necessary, but we must integrate new literacies into the classroom if we intend to prepare students for the 21st century. Two important books, The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved (2003) by Todd Oppenheimer and New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning (2003) by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel, address the complex issues involved with meeting our students' literacy and learning needs, now and in the future.

Oppenheimer's The Flickering Mind (2003) is, at first, a pointed attack on computers in education that expands upon a cover story he did for The Atlantic Monthly (Oppenheimer, 1997). While Oppenheimer's arguments are well supported throughout the book, he is a journalist, not a scholar, and he often cites newspaper articles and educational reports rather than peer-reviewed research journals. In the first section of his book, “False Promises,” Oppenheimer presents a historical overview of technology use in education, detailing how new technologies in the early 1980s such as LOGO, videodiscs, integrated learning systems, and digital drawing tools first emerged and then promptly disappeared as passing fads. He argues that an overemphasis on technology in the classroom has caused the educational system to forget essential learning elements: high expectations, exceptionally well-prepared teachers, and “an educational culture that is first and foremost about people” (p. 409).

“Hidden Troubles,” the second section, shares the challenges revealed in several years of classroom observations and interviews with teachers throughout the United States. Oppenheimer provides numerous examples of both school officials and classroom teachers who have fallen prey to idealistic sales pitches, quietly investing in technology without first thinking critically about its integration in classroom contexts. He posits that new technologies are often mistaken as mere tools or time fillers and are rarely used to prompt higher level thinking or critical reading.

In the final section, “Smarter Paths,” Oppenheimer contrasts the narrow approaches taken by educational software companies like Renaissance Learning (creator of the computer-based software Accelerated Reader) with a constructivist pedagogy he observed in one particular school. This school's focus on challenging students to be “perceptive readers and thoughtful writers” (p. 352) has proven effective, because they routinely have the top reading scores in the city. Oppenheimer emphasizes his point when he references the National Reading Panel's (NRP) report (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). According to Oppenheimer, the NRP panelists concluded that the genre of computerized software programs, such as Accelerated Reader, “seem somewhat promising…might help students gain facility with word and sound recognition and overall vocabulary…and may also stimulate comprehension” (p. 301). Oppenheimer refutes this report by asking the pertinent question “Why is a computer needed at all with these programs?” (p. 301). He recommends that technology be used in more thoughtful ways with clear educational goals and purposes. Oppenheimer promotes simplicity over seduction, constant support for classroom teachers, and thinking that is sensitive to “the culture's humanistic needs as much as to its electronic possibilities” (p. 395). He concludes with the hope that we, as educators, have learned from our past mistakes and will not squander future opportunities to make technology a truly meaningful part of learning.

In New Literacies (2003) Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel examine how the digital revolution has fundamentally transformed the nature of literacy practices in education and society. They argue that social networks and new literacies, “often referred to as post-typographic forms of textual practice” (p. 17), are essential to navigation, communication, and information seeking within a digitized world. They acknowledge the potential teachers have for preparing digitally literate students but also recognize that the educational system as a whole has failed to keep up with the changing times.

[F]ormal education can be so much more, and make far better, more direct, and more enabling connections between what students learn now and what they will do and be later, and this is what we should be struggling for…. [E]ven if teachers feel too beleaguered and encumbered to incorporate new literacies and new ways of learning and knowing into their teaching, it is nonetheless important for them to know and acknowledge the kinds of things young people are doing and being outside school in order to make effective pedagogical connections to them in class. (p. 206)