Reflections on Teaching with Technology

Filed in Teaching with Technology Portfolio

It is impossible to teach without technology. This is not only true in that most classrooms today are integrated with projector screens, computers, and souped-up podiums. It is also true in that, before "technology" became synonymous with "digital technology," the classroom has always depended on various old-school technologies—including, most importantly, writing itself.¹

At the same time, teaching with technology is sometimes, in a sense, too possible. Especially as generative artificial intelligence continues to develop and becomes increasingly integrated into learning environments, it is often all too easy to buy into technology’s promise of limitless utility.

A balance, therefore, is in order. I believe that the worst outcome for teaching with technology isn’t even incorporating tools that are less effective than advertised; rather, the worst outcome is a technological excess, which makes the technology itself stand out more than the course content it is supposed to enhance. Consequently, I practice a no-nonsense incorporation of technology into my classroom, following the base rule of “Less is more.” This does not mean using as little technology as possible; rather, it means using just as much technology that I need to improve the course’s delivery, and in such a way to enable, when appropriate, students' critical thinking about that implementation.

The technological excess I refer to is widespread. It is, in fact, basically the norm. The cloud is the ultimate example of technological excess: it has become standard operating practice that if something can be put on the cloud, it should be. Students progress through their educational careers in this context; the vast majority of them work with the Google office suite through high school, before migrating to the Microsoft bundle of apps in college. The cloud consensus promises knowledge workers, like teachers and students, that they can process documents at the speed of thought, that their work will always be available, and that it will always be saved.

In reality, however, working in the confines of the cloud involves consenting to a workflow that is necessarily volatile and occasionally unreliable. One of the repercussions of an uncritical reliance on cloud workflows is that it encourages the illusion of risk-free file management. Students are sometimes disabused of this illusion the hard way, when the essay they had been working on didn’t autosave like it should have, or when a document becomes lost in the ever-expanding virtual pile of cloud files.

This isn’t to say that using the cloud is completely without value, of course. The problem is the excess, not the service itself. Just as it is quickly becoming impossible to avoid artificial intelligence, it is pretty much impossible to avoid harnessing the powers of the cloud. The point is that it is less about avoiding the cloud (or AI, or any other technological feature) and more about strategically deploying its capabilities.

For example, I turned to Microsoft Word’s real-time document sharing feature when I wanted my students to do more truly collaborative work. Having two dozen students open and edit a document at the same time can be very advantageous for the right exercise, and it is obviously something that offline versions of Word cannot accommodate. I experimented with this kind of collaborative document sharing with a semester-long exercise in my course on literary and critical theory.

Another example of my “Less is more” approach to integrating technology in the classroom is the way I design my Canvas course space. It cannot be understated how significant Canvas is to students’ engagement with a course. It is obvious that a disorganized Canvas would be detrimental to students’ experience. But even an organized overcrowded Canvas poses the same excess issue that technology excels in providing. When I design my Canvas space, I prioritize minimal significant links. I also deactivate every single navigational tab that is not absolutely necessary to my course. The guiding question is: What do my students need to accomplish when they log into Canvas? The answer to this question should involve as little friction as possible. Students have enough friction navigating multiple different Canvas spaces for their courses, each designed differently and idiosyncratically. The last thing my students need when they get to the Home page of my Canvas space is to spend five minutes locating the action item they need.

One of the challenges of the “Less is more” approach to technology is that students arrive in the classroom from a technological context that is constantly ratcheting upward. This actually makes it more difficult to achieve the efficiency I aim for, since students are used to treating maximalized technology use as synonymous with efficiency itself. Another challenge I sometimes face is that my approach makes experimenting less attractive. I am less of an enthusiastic adopter and deployer of new technological strategies, which means that I may not be fully taking advantage of what tools are out there to improve my classroom tactics.

Luckily, teaching with technology is a constant negotiation. I don’t have everything figured out, but that’s what allows for creativity and insight.

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