The Rip Van Winkle Illusion
When Rip Van Winkle awakened and stumbled back to his village, everything was different. His house lay in ruins; most of the people he knew, he quickly discovered, were dead. And yet surprisingly little had changed – surprising, considering he’d slept for twenty years, considering there’d been a rather significant event in the interim: a revolution.
A strange new flag outside the village inn marked the shift, and on its signage, “the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.” The village populace seemed a bit busier, sure. And yet under the watchful gaze of George – be it King or President –much remained the same.
I’ve only been gone from ed-tech for two or three years; it seems both longer and shorter than that. Things have gone on without me, and I guess I have to scramble to catch up. 2U went bankrupt? Instructure has been acquired by private equity? My oh my, what an utterly unexpected future we now inhabit. Indeed, as I reenter this world, all Rip Van Winkle-like, I think I’m supposed to marvel at the transformation. I mean, that’s the story we’re constantly told about every new gadget, every software update: “this changes everything.”
The sign that hangs on the village inn now reads “AI.” But I’ll remind you, since so many seem to have forgotten: it read “AI” before I left. It’s been “AI” for a while now (arguably, almost a century). Perhaps those who want us to believe otherwise – that there’s been a revolution, that it’s a brave new world – hope we all just wander about in a foggy stupor, marveling at the same ol‘ same ol’.
I’ve written repeatedly about “ed-tech’s amnesia” – about the way in which ed-tech’s history gets erased, in no small part so that today’s “innovators” can position themselves as such: innovating. It certainly doesn’t help our understanding of the past that we’ve largely gutted history departments, or that we’ve handed cultural (not just economic) power to an industry that proudly proclaims that “the only thing that matters is the future.” But even within the field of ed-tech, among its practitioners and proponents old and new, memories seem extraordinarily short.
Of course, whenever we’re told there’s some sort of technological “campus tsunami” on the horizon, there’s an influx of sales- and spokespeople selling supplies and telling takes promising to help schools weather the storm. Suddenly everyone becomes an expert in ed-tech. (I guess there’s much money to be made, but LOL, I haven’t managed it.) Indeed, much like that great MOOC tsunami in 2012, commentators and consultants appear from within and beyond the school walls, ready to weigh in on the future of teaching and learning with technology. These days, as we all know, they’re eager to promote generative AI — totally new, totally transformative. As with MOOCs, these new experts are much more likely to trace their origins to business schools than to schools of education; their academic affiliations tend to read “management” rather than departments that contain the word “child” or god forbid “humanities.” And as with MOOCs, the objections of teachers, the expertise of instructional designers, the experiences of instructional technologists are often dismissed and ignored by presidents, principals, and provosts. Better to steer the institutional ship by the stars in The New York Times op-eds and bestseller lists.
