Being a very discombobulated man in Milwaukee, Christopher Sholes was strange. He often wore trousers inches too short for his legs. Working on and off in print journalism throughout his life, with some time away after accepting a position as Collector of the Port of Milwaukee to which he was appointed to by Abraham Lincoln, he had a knack for invention and innovation. Originally looking to come up with some sort of pagination machine, and with a few patents under his belt for small mechanical devices he had created, Sholes, on what I imagine to be a dreary Monday afternoon, came up with the typewriter, and with it, the QWERTY keyboard (Britannica). Darren Wershler-Henry in his 2007 book The Iron Whim explains how our modern view the typewriter is as a symbol of unadulterated truth in what he believes is “a non-existent sepia-toned era”, where “people typed passionately late into the night under the flickering light of a single naked bulb, sleeves rolled up, suspenders hanging down, lighting each new cigarette off the shouldering butt of the last, occasionally taking a pull from the bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.” Now, as any passionate historian of early typography will tell you, that is not quite the whole story. With around fifty fathers of the typewriter, “there was no single moment of discovery, no lone inventor crying “Eureka!” in a darkened laboratory” (The Typing Life), as one New Yorker article describes. No, this innovation was slow and painful, long and exhausting, and at the end of it… we had the typewriter. Months, years and decades of work for something as routine as a typewriter. My how times have changed. “A chicken in every pot” as the expression goes, suggesting mainstream affluence is the end goal of any progressive, modern society. What happens when all the pots are full? Where do we go from there, because we are a long way from the innovations of Christopher Sholes?
In 1978 the Minnesota Education Computing Consortium, or MECC, chose a two-year-old startup to supply an innovative new tool to public schools in the state. This one act did wonders for both the schoolchildren who had a substantial competitive edge over their peers thanks to this new computation machine and the company, which quickly became an education staple around the country. That simple transaction of 500 computers gave the company the foot in the door they needed for public schools nationwide. Now with a market cap of $923.55 billion, Apple Inc. is still alive and well (Watters). As the first real foray into modern technology since the mass purchase of Sholes’ typewriters a century before this set the pace for the next quarter century of innovation to modern classrooms. We, therefore, can point to the beginning of classroom innovations, but it may be harder to see where we are today and what innovations may lie just over the crest of the hill. Whatever lies ahead it is clear that the days of innovation through accessibility are over.
Today it is increasingly difficult to find any new innovation that is preparing to reshape the way that we do school in our 21st-century world. As Barbara Kurshan, a Forbes author and Executive Director of Academic Innovation at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania says in a 2016 article “Gone are the days when the success of technology integration in classrooms was measured by whether or not every student had access to a device. Simply making hardware available…used to be considered…innovation, but it wasn’t creative or novel.” Kurshan argues that the next place we have to go in terms of in-class innovation is real-time teacher data that can provide valuable information about the effectiveness of teachers’ lessons. According to a June 2015 study conducted by the Gates Foundation, Teachers Know Best, 67% of teachers are not satisfied with current data tools. This makes sense, that the biggest problem facing teachers is not a lack of access but a lack of analysis. Teachers hope every day that they are teaching their lessons effectively, however when they only receive information on performance infrequently and from years past it can be difficult to track performance in the short term. This means that the next big innovation to the educational IT field needs to be within data collection and analysis of student performance. One way this is possible is to move the completeness of learning to an electronic form so that the data is more easily collectible. Much like the early typewriters, this will be a crude and haphazard endeavor at first, only resulting in a shadow of the thing, of the thing, of the thing that will eventually be refined enough to make a lasting difference. Therefore, the question then becomes, are teachers willing to suffer through this time of turmoil before reaching a comfortable finished product?
Some believe that this innovation is among us already, and not as crude as one might think. With the inception and increasing popularity of programs such as Khan Academy, developed in large part by Salman Khan and funded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Google, online resources may hold the key to breaking the data collection and analysis barrier. Kami Thordarson, a teacher at Santa Rita Elementary, has been increasingly using the Khan Academy repertoire in her classroom, to the point where she soon intends to ‘flip’ her class. This means that students will watch explanatory style or lecture videos at home on their own time to understand concepts and spend class time working on problems and practicing skills with the aid of the teacher. This means more time for student-teacher interaction, rather than a one-sided ‘lecture’ style class, and more help when actually practicing the problem sets, rather than having to ask for help the next day. Her students have shown great improvement in the past few months, making Thordarson increasingly sure that this is a good idea. Additionally, there was a noted appreciation of Khan Academy from both students that did not fully understand a concept but didn’t want to ask for help and people that were returning to education after some time and wanted to brush up on some skills (Thompson). This all, however, pales in comparison to the ease with which a teacher can receive real-time data on retention rates for specific subjects, correct vs incorrect answers, and overall ability through these online programs. When you add the ability for students to re-watch lectures and a ‘keep working until you understand’ grading system (rather than a ‘hope you don’t get a bad grade’ system) Khan Academy and its counterparts looks like its poised to take over the education industry entirely.
Critics of Khan Academy are adamant that it is not. They say it most likely will never be a substitute for a live teacher or a traditional course of study claiming, “it is not a coherent curriculum of study that engages students at all the cognitive levels at which they need to be engaged.” However, critics also point out that “It’s OK that it’s not these things. We do not walk into a Mexican restaurant and fault it for not serving spaghetti” (Thalbert, Trouble). On the other hand, many critics of Khan Academy are in fact teachers. Could this mistrust of these programs come from a place of fear that they may one day be replaced, or that their job may shift more towards childcare rather than education? Might they be more inclined to exaggerate or be more disingenuous overall about the downfalls of the programs in order to gain a better sense of job security? Perhaps, but regardless of the answer Khan Academy and its compatriots are far from being ready to revolutionize the American education system.
So, perhaps fully online schooling is not the next logical step in today’s world, but those flipped classes seemed interesting. The idea that you can use class time exponentially more effectively by not wasting time explaining concepts is compelling to teachers, students that pick up on materials quickly and students that are a bit slower. If you can provide the material online and have students go over it as ‘homework’ you can use class time to explain anything that wasn’t clear. The role of the teacher then shifts to a personal mentor rather than a cookie-cutter lecturer. This makes the teacher much more effective in dealing with individual problems. For students that tend to pick up on new topics quickly they can watch the material once at home and be ready in class the next day, this means not wasting time at home doing redundant work. For slower students, they have the ability to watch and re-watch material to go deeper in-depth with interactive materials. Dr. Robert Thalbert of Grand Valley State University, a noted researcher and speaker on the topic of ‘flipped classrooms’, after flipping one of his Calculus one classes in mid-2015 explored the fundamental rules that he learned from the experience. The most notable of his points was his first, “The first step toward effective flipped learning in an online course is to decouple the learning process from time/space coordinates.” Before realizing this, he explains that he felt constrained by the notion of personal vs shared workspaces on online forums and discussion boards and only by shedding this binary view was he able to let the space become what it needed to be. In part then, the online education revolution will not come without a mentality that is willing to fully embrace it and let techno-Darwin do his job. Early adopters: or people that use new technology very soon after it is released are imperative for the future of innovation. This poses a problem if, for the sake of argument, teachers or people that become teacher aren’t the type of people that are early adopters, or perhaps less hypothetically if funding for this new technology isn’t available for teachers to do the experimenting necessary.
It would be prudent at this time to examine an assumption that we have been operating under but that may be to our detriment if it is not checked. The assumption is that teachers will be able to handle any new technology that may be developed. This may seem counterintuitive, but it is not. When is the last time you saw an older person struggling with their phone? It could be very bad if our education institutions were to invest in new technology and teachers were unable to wield it properly. This means that teacher training programs built around this new technology must be implemented or the integrity of these programs may be compromised. How difficult will the implementation of these programs be? Teachers across the country are required to participate in recertification and continuing education programs already, adding a technology component to these existing programs would be the easiest way to create mass teacher training expectations. This would ensure that teachers have the knowledge and skill base to effectively utilize this new technology.
It is clear through all of this that the next great innovations may not be clear to us yet. That to be ready to adapt to any new technology will require a framework receptive to it, and that accessibility is not enough to be considered innovation anymore. With all change comes resistance and pushback, especially from that have the most to lose, but should the fear of the rough, unpolished process be a deterrent enough to condemn the final product? I say no. Tradition has its place but much like Christopher Sholes we need to be prudent in our efforts to innovate and adapt, otherwise, we are doomed to live by tradition alone, and nobody wants that.
Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. “Christopher Latham Sholes.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 14 Feb. 2018,
Kurshan, Barbara. “Technology and Classroom Data.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 26 July 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/barbarakurshan/2016/07/26/technology-and-classroom-data/#451140142039.
Talbert, Robert. “Is flipping an online course possible?.” Casting Out Nines, The Chronicle, 14 May 2015, http://www.chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2015/05/14/is-flipping-an-online-course-possible/
Talbert, Robert. “The Trouble with Khan Academy.” Casting Out Nines, The Chronicle, 3 July 2012, http://www.chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/07/03/the-trouble-with-khan-academy/
“The Typing Life.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 18 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/09/the-typing-life.
Thompson, Clive. “How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education.” Wired, Conde Nast, 15 July 2011, www.wired.com/2011/07/ff_khan/.
“Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning.” U.S. High School Graduation Rate Hits New Record High | U.S. Department of Education, US Department of Education (ED), www.ed.gov/oii-news/use-technology-teaching-and-learning.
Watters, Audrey. “How Steve Jobs Brought the Apple II to the Classroom”. Hacked Education, 25 Feb 2015, http://hackeducation.com/2015/02/25/kids-cant-wait-apple
Wershler-Henry, Darren S. The Iron Whim. Cornell University Press, 2007.
www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Latham-Sholes.
