Many parents, politicians and teachers pretend to think that a digital demon has settled in the heart of Norwegian schools, and that an exorcist armed with colored pencils and erasers is the rescue. It is an attitude as enlightened as the witch trials of the Middle Ages. 2023 was the year we really saw the introduction of artificial intelligence in schools, a polarized debate around digital schools and steep fronts in and outside teachers’ rooms across the country. Many people want the screens out of school. Reintroduce pen and paper. Shut down the internet. I would prefer that my students are not deprived of their new digital everyday life in favor of coloring sheets and markers. Or the freedom to make a podcast, documentary film or a game to show one’s competence, instead of writing yet another banal text of 1,500 words in Times New Roman str. 12. The written task as the gold standard for measuring pupils’ competence is dead. Not because technology-hungry teachers or thoughtless politicians have tricked artificial intelligence and touch screens into schools to undermine the existing, but because the technological development in the world has made it necessary. Lecturer Eirik Grip Bay believes that the critics of digital tools in schools are wrong. Photo: Privat We can think what we want about that, but our mandate as teachers is to equip students to face the future. Not to romanticize about a bygone era. The digital shift is here to stay – and I myself see more opportunities than problems. Much of the debate around digital is rooted in several fundamental misunderstandings. E.g. the assumption that digital = sitting still. Digital = social media. Digital = stop reading, writing and thinking. This is wrong, and therefore misses much of the criticism against the introduction of digital methods and tools in Norwegian schools. If you use digital tools to sit still and consume content, surf social media or let AI technology uncritically produce content that you then present as your own – then we are a little out of sorts. But the digitization of the school should not be done in this way. The digital aids are tools, and must be used in ways that provide educational and didactic value. You don’t read novels on a screen – you do that on paper. But you don’t make a documentary film with a chalkboard either – you do that with a 4K camera, mosquitoes with Bluetooth and a powerful machine with Adobe Premiere Pro, guided by teachers who know how to do it. Introducing digital tools does not mean that we should stop reading. However, this means that the narrow “I-write-therefore-think-and-I-understand” way of assessing students’ competence is a thing of the past. Seeing opportunities with new tools does not mean that you are blind to the downsides. New methods lead to both gains and losses. I use a nail gun when I install moldings, and an electric drill to attach screws. It goes faster and gives better results. The downside is loss of motor skills and hand-eye coordination. I consider it to be worth it. We have to consider what the gains from new methods can be, as well as what we are in danger of losing. Digital tools that challenge today’s everyday school life are a welcome breath of fresh air. Not because it can’t lead to problems in the long term, but because it can force an overripe and fundamental change of what school can be. Our students must learn to know themselves and the society they live in, they must practice innovative thinking and collaboration, and they must be equipped to face the challenges we assume they will face later in life. Instead, we continue an outdated system where a large number of students do not know what they are doing, why they are doing it or what they are going to use it for. Students are demotivated. They feel a lack of relevance. The school system, which has never functioned optimally, and excludes large parts of the student body from feeling mastery and meaning, is a sacred cow we dare not shake. Good digitization can and should be a paradigm shift. Digital aids should get students out of their chairs. Out of the classroom. They should produce, not consume. They should be in process, not tested by a rigid trial system. More and richer experiences in a more varied environment. Out in the forest and up in the trees, with camera in hand and GPS on the mobile phone. Enter the podcast studio to read in audiobooks or debate politics. Up in the school’s creative workshop to make a board game about the industrial revolution. To do our craft, teachers and students must have access to the entire toolbox. On top of it there will be AI, a podcast studio, touchscreens, GPS devices and all the world’s software. Yes, and then books, then.
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The digital witch trial – Speech
