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Never Send a Human to Do a Machine's Job
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Never Send a Human to Do a Machine's Job
Correcting the Top 5 EdTech Mistakes



July 2015 | 144 pages | Corwin

Do what you do best and let technology do the rest

Technology has transformed our lives. Virtually every school and classroom is connected. Why then, has it not transformed education? Consider these five ways educators can begin to optimize classroom technology and rethink its use.

  • See technology as a complement rather than a replacement
  • Embrace its creation potential over consumption function
  • Encourage design and personalized learning over standards and outcomes
  • Celebrate the journey toward digital competence over curriculum improvement 
  • Focus on tech-pedagogy over product usage

Learn how to let technology cultivate student autonomy, creativity, and responsibility while focusing on lessons that hone higher-order and critical thinking skills. 

"Dr.  Zhao continues to push educators’ thinking by taking a serious examination of the role technology has played in education. The struggles he lays out are challenges educators try to overcome on an almost daily bases. The new thinking in this book needs to be read by those in the classroom and leaders alike." 
Steven W. Anderson, Author
Content Curation: How to Avoid Information Overload, @web20classroom


This book masterfully address the issues related to technology integration in schools. Dr. Zhao artfully navigates through the misconception of technology as the ultimate solution to the challenges of teaching.
Jared Covili, Author of Going Google and Classroom in the Cloud


 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Authors
 
Introduction
 
1. The Wrong Relationship Between Technology and Teachers: Complementing in an Ecosystem Versus Replacing in a Hierarchy
An Ecosystem, Not a Hierarchy: Reconsidering the Relationship Between Teachers and Technology

 
Technology and Teachers in a Learning Ecosystem: What Are Their Niches?

 
Constructing a Learning Ecosystem: What Does It Look Like?

 
 
2. The Wrong Application: Technology as Tools for Consumption Versus Tools for Creating and Producing
The First Approach: Technology as a Tool for Consumption

 
Constructivism: Constructing by Creating and Producing

 
Wikipedia: A Mass Project of Creating and Making

 
Digital Stories, Twitters, Blogs, Videos, and Robots: New Genres of Creating and Making

 
Diverse Needs as Creators and Makers

 
 
3. The Wrong Expectation: Technology to Raise Test Scores Versus Technology to Provide Better Education
Can Technology Boost Test Scores? Don’t Let the Wrong Question Guide Our Technology Use

 
Providing Better Education: The Real Value of Educational Technology

 
 
4. The Wrong Assumptions: Technology as Curriculum Versus Digital Competence
The Wrong Assumptions: Technology as Curriculum/Instruction

 
What Is Digital Citizenship?

 
Developing Digital Citizenship Through the Use of Digital Technology

 
 
5. The Wrong Technology Implementation: Top Down Versus Bottom Up
Two Technology Paradoxes

 
Before 3 p.m. Model

 
After 3 p.m. Model

 
Before 3 p.m. Versus After 3 p.m.: What Are the Differences?

 
Alternative Ways to Implement Technology

 
Conclusion

 
 
6. Making It Right: Reimagining Education in the Second Machine Age
The Need for Reimagining Education

 
Reimagining the What: Curriculum

 
Reimagining the How: Pedagogy

 
Reimagine the Teacher-Machine Relationship: Summary

 
 
Index

“Yong Zhao and his team have written a book that challenges the ideas not of how technology can make teaching better, but of how technology can create schools that are truly learner-centered. They focus not only on what technology could do better, but how the human element of schools is still needed now more than ever."

George Couros, Division Principal, Innovative Teaching, Learning, and Leadership Consultant
Parkland School Division, Edmonton, AB, Canada

"Dr. Yong Zhao continues to push educators’ thinking by taking a serious examination of the role technology has played (or hasn’t) in education in the last 30 years. The struggles he lays out are those that many are trying to overcome on an almost daily bases. The new thinking in this book needs to be read by those in the classroom and leaders alike." 

Steven W. Anderson, Author
Content Curation: How to Avoid Information Overload, @web20classroom

"This book masterfully address the issues related to technology integration in schools. Dr. Zhao artfully navigates through the misconception of technology as the ultimate solution to the challenges of teaching. The book provides useful examples of the successful marriage good instruction and good technology can have when properly balanced."

Jared Covili, Author of Going Google and Classroom in the Cloud

"In the final chapter, Zhao shines a spotlight on the need to leverage the voice of the STUDENTS (#stuvoice) in our classrooms as an asset to our own evolving connected capacities as adults. The development of social media in today’s world is constant, and each day our students bring with them rich cultures and talents into our classrooms. Zhao identifies this ripe space for innovation to be infused, but a culture shift is necessary on the part of adults. It’s not about the tools but the people. Students need to be empowered and teachers (and especially school leaders) need to relinquish some control. We can breed innovation or stifle innovation here."

Dr. Joe_Mazza, Leadership Innovation Manager
Graduate School of Education, University of Pennslvania

"Never Send a Human to Do A Machine’s Job is simultaneously an historical look at the myriad disappointments of technology in education over the past few decades and a vision for a future of a more personalized and product-filled educational experience. The vision provided in the book is realistic, well researched, and highly relevant to the needs of today’s learner. It is time to totally reimagine education. Are you ready?"

Curtis J. Bonk, Professor/President
Indiana University/CourseShare, LLC

"At this critical junction for education technology, we need voices like Yong Zhao’s. Never Send a Human combines a historical perspective on past failures with forward-thinking solutions, and his narration is eloquent all along the way. This book is transformational in its vision of teachers and tech working side-by-side for students."

Angela Maiers, Educator, Author, and Founder of Choose2Matter

"Dr. Zhao's instructional technology expertise shines brightly in this book. He does a wonderful job of describing the various ways in which educators and policymakers have misframed digital technologies to the detriment of their learning potential for students. Replete with numerous ways to think our way back out of our self-inflicted integration challenges, this book offers hope to those of us who are ready to reimagine the power of learning technologies in our schools."

Dr. Scott McLeod, Director of Innovation and Founding Director
Prairie Lakes AEA, CASTLE

"Yong Zhao and his colleagues have written a valuable guide to the uses and misuses of technology in classrooms. They strip away all the false promises and hollow rhetoric and offer a clear framework for using technology in ways that allow students to create, not consume." 

Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators and The Global Achievement Gap
Key features

Drawing on learning theories and research on educational technology, the authors:

  • present a new perspective on technology in education
  • discuss the new perspective with research and the current hot topics in educational technology
  • provide suggestions and recommendations for political and education leaders, school leaders, teachers, and parents

Sample Materials & Chapters

Introduction


For instructors

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