You know that universally recognized feeling
of sitting down at your desk on a Monday morning.
You've got your coffee, you boot up your computer,
and you realize your company pushed a massive
software update over the weekend. Oh yeah, pure
dread. Right. You just stare at the screen, the
interface is completely unfamiliar, all the buttons
have moved, you like click something hoping for
a drop -down menu, and suddenly you've accidentally
synced all your personal photos to the company
server. We've all been there. It is a nightmare.
And in that moment of just sheer ice cold panic,
one singular question pops into your head. Who
was actually supposed to teach me how to use
this thing? Exactly. And it's funny because that
is exactly what we are looking at today. We're
tackling a piece of writing that attempts to
answer that exact question. Yeah, it's this really
insightful and honestly, a surprisingly contentious
post from educational technology expert Dr. Gary
Ackerman. It's pulled from his blog, Hack Science,
and it's simply titled, On Teaching Computers.
It's just a brilliant distillation of a problem
we literally all face. I mean, we are constantly
handed these incredibly powerful, incredibly
complex digital tools, whether that's at work
or in the classroom, but the instruction manual
is... Somehow always missing. Yeah, it never
comes with the device and dr. Ackerman has spent
years in the trenches of k -12 education, right
working specifically at that intense friction
point where human beings collide with mandatory
technology, right? He's been the guy trying to
make it all work So the mission of today's deep
dive is to trace the historical evolution of
how computers actually entered our learning environments.
Because as it turns out, that history directly
dictates who we blame when the screen freezes.
It really does. It shapes our whole mindset.
We're going to explore whose job it is to actually
teach us how to navigate our digital tools. I
mean, is it the IT department? Is it your manager?
Is it your teacher? Or is it entirely up to you?
OK, let's unpack this. So to understand that
modern frustration, you know, the forced software
update or a new digital curriculum, Ackerman,
points out that we have to look back at the physical
location of technology over the past few decades.
The physical location, like where the computer
literally sat in the room. Exactly. The physical
footprint of the computer historically established
the entire philosophy of who was responsible
for maintaining it and, more importantly, teaching
it. Oh, wow. OK, yeah, he lays out this distinct
timeline. He starts with what he calls the marginal
tools era. The marginal tools era. Yeah. And
if you were in a classroom in like the late 80s,
early 90s, you know, this era, there was usually
one incredibly heavy beige machine physically
shoved into the back corner of the room. It was
practically a piece of furniture that occasionally
blinked. Right. And during that early phase,
that machine was definitely not the center of
the learning experience. It was just an accessory.
A novelty. And because it sat in the domain of
a specific classroom, the responsibility for
it fell entirely on the shoulders of that specific
teacher. But there was a catch to that. A big
catch. The catch was that nobody was actually
forcing them to use it. The teachers who championed
those early devices were entirely self -motivated
enthusiasts. Yeah, they were total autodidacts.
Exactly. They had to figure out how to boot the
system, how to load a floppy disk, and how to
troubleshoot these weird error codes entirely
on their own. There was no dedicated IT support
coming down to room 204 to help them out. But
that silent enthusiasm, you know... It just couldn't
scale. As schools realized computers were not
just a passing fad, they had to provide access
to every student. And that ushered in the second
phase of Ackerman's timeline, which is the era
of the computer lab. Ah, the computer lab. Yes.
This was a massive architectural and philosophical
shift. Schools literally took the technology
out of the individual classrooms and centralized
it into one dedicated space. That mystical room
down the hall with 20 glowing screens and the
humming air conditioner. That's the one. And
when schools centralized the hardware, they also
centralized the expertise. They hired dedicated
specialists to run that room. Meaning the regular
classroom teachers. were suddenly off the hook.
Totally off the hook. They would march their
students down the hall, drop them off with a
specialist for an hour of basic typing practice,
or maybe a little Oregon trail, and then they'd
leave. Yeah, it's very much like... Well, actually,
it's like taking a vacation to a foreign country,
right? Yeah. Where that computer lab specialist
acts as your dedicated tour guide. I like that.
You arrive, the guide translates the local language
for you, they make sure you don't get lost in
the operating system, and when the hour is up...
your vacation ends. You return to your normal
analog classroom. You visit the digital world,
but you certainly don't live there. What's fascinating
here is how that physical separation created
a really deep psychological separation. Because
the computers were quarantined in a specific
room, the knowledge of how to use them was also
quarantined. Oh, that makes so much sense. Right.
The general education teacher didn't need to
know how the network functioned or how to troubleshoot
a frozen screen because, well, that was the tour
guide's job. It created this culture of, like,
learned helplessness. Exactly. Learned helplessness
among general educators regarding technology.
But obviously, that paradigm could not last.
Eventually, we entered the modern era of one
-to -one initiatives. The laptop on every single
desk in every single subject. To build on that
foreign country analogy, the students and teachers
are no longer just visiting for an hour a week.
The border walls came down and they had been
forced to move to that country permanently. Yes.
The technology is now the air they breathe. It's
deeply integrated into the daily rhythm of learning.
Which brings us to the fundamental collision
Ackerman writes about. The tour guide is gone.
The tour guide is gone, and the general education
teacher, who for decades was implicitly told
that technology was someone else's department,
is now standing in a room full of digital devices.
And they are expected to seamlessly integrate
them into a lesson plan. And that friction, I
mean, it absolutely peaked during the ultimate
pressure cooker for educational technology, the
COVID -19 pandemic. Oh, without a doubt. Ackerman
mentions. hearing acquaintances recount stories
of their colleagues in the teaching profession
actively complaining, saying that it shouldn't
be their job to teach students how to use the
required hardware and software. They felt they
were being forced into an IT role. And Ackerman
approaches those complaints from a very specific
vantage point. You have to remember, from 2014
to 2019, right before the pandemic hit, he worked
in a K -12 co -teaching role. Okay, so he was
right in the middle of it. He was he wasn't just
dropping off software. He was actively designing
tech solutions alongside teachers. He actually
notes that he spent just as much time teaching
the educators as he did the students trying to
build this collaborative bridge. Wow. But then
when COVID hit and forced everyone into a fully
digital space, he watched that bridge basically
catch fire. Teachers retreated to the stance
of, you know, this isn't my job. OK, I have to
jump in here and play devil's advocate on behalf
of the listener because there's a very real human
element to this burnout. Sure. Let's look at,
say, a veteran biology teacher or a literature
professor. Their profound specialized expertise
is cellular mitosis or Shakespearean syntax.
Is it genuinely fair to demand that they suddenly
act as ad hoc IT support for a digital room full
of 30 panicked students who can't get their microphones
to unmute? It's a lot to ask. It seems like we
are demanding they perform two completely different,
highly specialized jobs at the exact same time.
I mean the cognitive load alone would destroy
their ability to actually teach the subject matter.
That is the core tension of modern education
and frankly the modern workplace too. The burnout
is incredibly real. But Ackerman argues that
treating the subject matter and the technology
as two separate jobs is a fundamental misunderstanding
of what education is today. How so? Well, if
we connect this to the bigger picture, Ackerman
introduces this vital concept of information
ecologies. Information ecologies. So he is essentially
arguing that we aren't just handing kids tools.
We are preparing them to survive in a completely
digital habitat. An ecology is a living, breathing,
interconnected system. Precisely. Schools have
always existed to prepare students to participate
in the ecologies they will eventually enter as
adults. Today, those ecologies—the physical places,
the online spaces, the organizations, and the
corporate cultures we all navigate— They are
entirely dominated by digital systems. Right.
Think about your biology teacher example. You
cannot teach modern biology today without acknowledging
the digital tools that actual biologists use.
Tools to sequence DNA, model protein folding,
or track migration patterns. So trying to teach
biology without teaching the digital tools of
biology is like trying to teach marine biology
on dry land. You are ignoring the very water
the discipline swims in. That is the perfect
way to phrase it. Ackerman explicitly states
that no matter the subject or the age of the
student, there are age -appropriate applications
of technology. You just cannot separate the medium
from the message anymore. It's all one thing.
Right. Teaching the tool is teaching the subject.
To prepare a student for the real world means
preparing them to actively use the tools of that
world. So, regarding your devil's advocate pushback,
Ackerman believes it absolutely is the teacher's
responsibility to teach the technology because
the technology and the subject are now part of
the exact same ecology. Okay, but if we accept
that premise... that the subject and the digital
tool are inextricably linked, we still have to
address the reality of the cognitive overload
we just talked about. Yes, we do. You can't just
tell an overwhelmed professional, hey, your job
is now an information ecology, deal with it.
That doesn't prevent a system -wide collapse.
If the biology teacher spends 40 minutes fixing
Wi -Fi connections, the students don't learn
about cells. And Ackerman knows this, which is
why he moves past the diagnosis and provides
a concrete solution. He lays out three specific
dependencies, three pillars that must be simultaneously
supported to make this integration actually work.
And if any one of these pillars is weak? The
entire ecology suffers. Let's break down these
pillars. Pillar number one places the initial
onus on the educators. Ackerman states that teachers
must become independent users and active troubleshooters.
of the devices and the lessons they deliver.
The phrase active troubleshooters is vital here.
This is about breaking that psychological learned
helplessness inherited from the computer lab
era. When a link is broken, the default reaction
cannot be to throw your hands up and wait for
the tour guide to arrive. Right. The user has
to take ownership of their immediate environment.
But they aren't expected to do it in a vacuum,
which brings us to pillar number two. Teachers
must have access to specialists who help them
develop those troubleshooting skills. Crucially
though, Ackerman draws a very firm boundary here.
These specialists cannot assume responsibility
for doing it all. Exactly. The specialist is
a coach, not a rescuer. If the specialist jumps
in and fixes the problem every time the system
glitches, the teacher never builds the mental
model required to become that independent user
we talked about in Pillar 1. They just stay dependent.
Exactly. The ecology requires the teacher to
build resilience. Here's where it gets really
interesting. Because the third pillar shifts
the responsibility completely away from the classroom.
It points the finger directly at the engineers
and developers building the tools in the first
place. Yes. It's not all on the teachers. Ackerman
says that IT system designers must understand
two vital concepts. Perceived ease of use and
perceived effectiveness. These two concepts are
what actually drive a human being's intention
to use technology. And they are so important.
Let's look at this through the lens of city planning.
The IT system designers are the architects and
urban planners building a new city. The specialists
are the mayors and local guides trying to get
people to move there. The teachers and students
are the citizens. Okay, I see where you're going.
If the architects build a city with a layout
that makes no logical sense, say a neighborhood
with no sidewalks and dead -end streets everywhere,
that is a failure of perceived ease of use. And
we can look at the psychology behind why that
failure is so catastrophic. It comes down to
cognitive load theory. If a teacher has to spend
15 minutes just figuring out how to navigate
a poorly designed software dashboard, it eats
up their limited working memory. Right. It drains
them. The mental energy required to parse the
clunky user interface is energy literally stolen
from the act of teaching. Exactly. The citizen
looks at the badly designed city and says, this
is too exhausting to navigate. And then you have
perceived effectiveness. If the software doesn't
actually solve a real problem for the teacher,
if it's just technology for technology's sake,
the citizen realizes there is no reason to visit
that neighborhood anyway. It just won't go. Right.
No matter how much the specialist encourages
them to use the new system, the teacher will
reject it because the cost of using it outweighs
the benefit. This raises an important question
about how we distribute blame when technology
fails in an organization. What makes Ackerman's
three -tiller framework so compelling is that
it holds everyone accountable. Everyone plays
a part. It is not just on the end user to stop
complaining and figure it out. If the developers
design a system that lacks perceived ease of
use or effectiveness, the entire chain breaks
down. The teacher refuses to engage with it,
the students lose out on the learning, and the
IT department sits in their office wondering
why their incredibly expensive new software suite
has a 0 % adoption rate. So what does this all
mean for you listening right now? We've talked
a lot about K -12 classrooms, but Ackerman's
blueprint applies to literally anyone navigating
the modern digital landscape. Absolutely anyone.
Whether you are prepping for a corporate board
meeting, trying to catch up on a new field of
research, or just trying to survive your own
company's newly mandated project management software,
you are operating inside your own information
ecology. And to thrive in that ecology without
burning out, you need to demand this exact trifecta
in your professional life. You need your organization
to provide well -designed systems that actually
make your job easier. You need access to mentors
who can coach you through the learning curve.
Mentors not rescuers. Right. But ultimately,
you have to cultivate your own willingness to
be an active troubleshooter. You cannot afford
to be a passive user waiting for the IT tour
guide. Because the passive user is the one who
gets left behind when the ecology naturally evolves.
To recap the conceptual journey we've taken today,
we started back in the day dropping kids off
to play Oregon Trail in isolated specialized
computer labs where technology was treated like
a fun little detour from actual learning. a vacation
from the real classroom. Right. And we've traced
that history all the way to today's fully integrated
information ecologies, where digital literacy
is no longer a siloed subject managed by a specialist
down the hall. It is the very medium of learning
and working, inextricably linked to every subject
and every profession. Understanding that historical
shift from the physical lab to the ubiquitous
laptop, it really helps us contextualize the
friction we feel today. It is entirely natural
to feel overwhelmed when the boundaries of our
jobs expand so dramatically. It is. But recognizing
that an ecology requires all of us to be active
participants is the first step toward reclaiming
our agency in a digital world. Now, before we
let you go, I want to leave you with one final
thought to mull over. Something that builds on
Dr. Ackerman's framework but pushes it into a
wildly provocative frontier. Okay, let's hear
it. If you look at his blog, Hack Science, he
categorizes his writing and among those categories
are generative AI and AI in education. Oh wow,
yeah. If we accept the premise that schools and
workplaces exist to prepare us for information
ecologies, what happens to our roles when the
technology fundamentally shifts again? What happens
when the tool you are supposed to actively troubleshoot
isn't just a frozen screen or a complicated spreadsheet,
but an artificial intelligence that actively
does the learning and the thinking for the student.
That is a massive shift. Right. If the ecology
becomes populated by systems that can generate
their own knowledge, who takes responsibility
for teaching the human mind when the computer
can teach itself? It forces us to ask what active
troubleshooting even means when the machine is
smarter than the user. It makes that old Oregon
Trail floppy disk look incredibly simple, doesn't
it? It really does. Thank you for joining us
on this deep dive into the evolution of teaching
technology. We hope you walk away with a better
understanding of the ecologies you navigate every
day. Thank you for listening. Until next time,
keep questioning the tools, keep troubleshooting
the problems, and we will catch you on the next
deep dive.