Abstract
The main premise of Disruptive Classroom Technologies is that in order to be effective, classroom technologies must be “disruptive”; to disturb current educational trends and deeply held beliefs by using technology in new and previously unimagined ways which can give students ownership of their own learning. Magaña posits that the failure of classroom technology is not because teachers do not use technologies to improve their educational process, but rather that teachers tend to use technology to replicate, in limited ways, things that can already be done without technology. Magaña argues that in order for technology to successfully transform educational practice, teachers must push themselves to use technology in new, disruptive ways. The book concludes with some striking examples of how students used technology in the processes of inquiry learning and social entrepreneurship to both contribute to the world in which they live and to make real-world learning connections. The examples of the ways in which students use technology are extremely thought-provoking, and it is easy to see that students involved in real-world inquiry would be more motivated to learn and demonstrate their learning.
This book is broken into three parts, with a total of six chapters: there is an introduction, a section that explains the three categories of classroom technology use, and a conclusion. Magaña labeled his model the T3 Framework, and there are six different types of technology use detailed within this model. In the introduction, Magaña introduces the T3 model and compares it to more established models: the SAMR model and the TPACK model. Both of these models describe and guide the effective use of technology in the classroom, but according to Magaña, the T3 model is superior because it is unambiguous, actionable, and can be used to guide professional growth.
The six stages of technology use described in the T3 model are automation, consumption, production, contribution, inquiry design, and social entrepreneurship. The first two stages, translational, are the bulk of technology use in many classrooms: students use technology to automate common tasks, such as composing and revising writing; they also use technology to consume information when they conduct research online. The next two stages, transformational, are less common, but more advanced: students use technology to produce learning artifacts, such as videos, and contribute to the learning community, such as with video tutorials posted online and shared. The final two stages of the model allow students to “transcend” their learning situation: students use technology for inquiry design in which they explore real-world difficulties that the author calls “wicked,” and finally, students use technology to interact with their world and attempt to solve these wicked problems through social entrepreneurship. This ability of technology to enable students to challenge and even change the world around them ultimately results in a shift in the power structure of education and its institutions. Students are able to take control of their own learning processes and truly embark upon a journey of lifelong learning in which they have the power to affect their own learning pathways. In the conclusion, the author discusses how to use the professional development cycle to effectively incorporate his model into classroom practice.
The strength of this book is that it very effectively lays out a known difficulty with the use of technology in education, and it also very clearly details how the uses of technology in the classroom can be changed in order to focus on high-value technology use. The promise of classroom technology has always been that more students will succeed and that teachers will be able to do more with more students, but in fact, the use of technology in the classroom has not always lived up to this promise. Technology can help engage and motivate learners, but good instruction proves to be far more effective than technology use in today’s classrooms.
A weakness of this book is that it doesn’t effectively make the case for how Magaña’s model supports or will improve student learning. The reader can assume that real-world problem-solving with authentic audiences results in more engaged, motivated learners, but there are no data referenced to support that students actually learn more, or that their learning is more relevant. There are illustrations of classes and students who engaged in solving real-world problems and appeared to be very motivated by their learning, but there are no data to show that they learned more than students who learned in more traditional formats.
Overall, this book is a very useful tool for a school to include in its repertoire to support developing teachers. At this point, there does not appear to be adequate research that supports “high-value” technology use in the classroom as different from the types of technology use that are common. However, there is certainly an apparent value in encouraging students to be inquisitive, engaged learners, especially when combined with research-based instructional and assessment methodology. This book provides a solid blueprint for teachers to expand their use of educational technology in the classroom, and it also provides guidelines for both classroom practitioners and for administrators to evaluate classroom technology use.