In the 1980’s, scholar James Burke created a show for PBS called Connections. In the course of each episode, he would demonstrate the interconnectedness of cultural and scientific evolution, noting that “there is always a connection but, if the link has never been made before, nobody knows it’s there." Through a circuitous examination of ideas, Burke would demonstrate such connections as the use of cobalt in dyeing Ming vases to its importance in the manufacture of computer chips.

Popularizing this kind of thinking has led to numerous insights about the importance of personal idiosyncrasy and historic serendipity in the analysis of technological progress, but it is also illuminating to see how the development of ideas in education can also be a matter of chance—or even destiny. Let’s try it, and I promise that I will arrive at some insights about teaching with technology.

Two years before Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, Tsar Alexander II of Russia issued a Declaration of Emancipation for his feudalistic empire’s serfs, bonded laborers whose duty, enforced by the crown, was to work for landed nobility in exchange for protection. The entry of an entirely illiterate population into society was fraught with problems, many of which were analyzed in essays written by novelist Leo Tolstoy. In these essays, Tolstoy laments the inability of former serfs to understand why written stories hold more value in society than those circulated in oral tradition, and speculates on ways in which education might help move the children of serfs forward into a more enlightened mindset.

Fast forward sixty odd years to young Russian cognitive psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who reads Tolstoy’s essays and uses them to round out his own ideas on literacy acquisition. About the same time, American educator John Dewey visits Russia, meets Vygotsky and they discuss the ideas of the Pragmatic Movement. As a result of this conversation, some have suggested, Vygotsky began to articulate his ideas about the Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding in terms that were less speculative and more concrete. 

Any fan of Burke’s Connections series knows that part of the fun was in a slight twisting and even over-interpretation of events in order to speculate about future permutations of an idea’s consequence and possible upshots. In this spirit, I will do the same. All of us who have emerged from schools of education will remember—with varying degrees of enthusiasm—reading about Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development or Zoped. Vygotsky argues that all learning takes place in this zone: the area between what a student can do independently and what they can accomplish with the help of a “more skilled other.” His ideas have helped us scaffold our lessons and differentiate instruction.

Let’s fast forward ourselves from our ancient days in education school into our technologically-connected classrooms (and when I say ancient, I speak for myself, of course). For many of us, the tables have turned. Technologically, our students are often the “more skilled other.” We may know more about curriculum integration and classroom management, but they have what we many of us never will: the fearless mastery and intuitive understanding of how technology works that can only develop from birth in a world where a telephone with a dial sits in a collectibles shop.

I don’t know where it will end, but I can predict that we sit on the edge of an enormous paradigm shift in education, waiting only for the day when these kids re-enter the classroom as teachers and use technology as effortlessly and effectively as my younger self wielded a piece of chalk. In the meantime, let’s honor their knowledge and seek their insights-- to the degree good sense and an understanding of adolescent psychology allow.