Technology as a Tool
In Montessori circles, we often talk about things being tools, not toys. We don't give children a toy hammer, we offer them a real tool and teach them out to use it safely. It's the reality that they could get hurt by using the tool improperly that offers both adult and child the opportunity to closely monitor interactions and provide adequate supervision and direction as skills are gained. The same approach is called for whenever we are talking about technology- either for ourselves or our students and children. We need to offer the real tool only when we are able to appropriately monitor interactions and provide adequoate skills and direction. The greater the risk, the more supervision we offer, the longer we wait to introduce, and the more we weigh that all necessary foundational skills are in place before undertaking introduction. Too often, however, we don't adequately recognize the risks of technological tools. We don't give adequate time to allow proper foundations that reduce those risks. We don't provide adequate supervision to intervene when tools are being used unsafely.
To be honest, we see this all the time when we visit Catholic schools for our Discipleship Check Ups and we hear complaints from all types of school parents with concerns over school-wide 1:1 device policies. At the same time, at Designed for Discipleship we aren't at all anti-technology. It is a tool and a quite helpful one at that! One critical factor, however, is that regardless of the type of technology, proper foundations must be in place. Particularly when it comes to AI and social media (which is, of course, now inundated with AI) , many of those foundations involve a solid sense of identity. For teachers, those foundations include the same human identity foundations and the art of teaching foundations such as skills that will allow them to actually teach the student in front of them rather than simply present a pre-populated lesson on the smart board. The Designed for Discipleship Firm Foundations Webinar Series offers a monthly conversation around nurturing the foundations of friendship with Jesus in children from birth to eighteen. This month we are joined by Stephanie Quesnelle, author of Created, Not Coded- a new children's book to help families start conversations around the true nature of identity (imago dei) and tool (telos) of technology, specifically AI.
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