Going Amish for learning and technology - by Ishmael Burdeau
Last month I was somewhat surprised when my teenage son announced that he was going to sell his iPhone and start using a £10 monocrome mobile instead. Naturally I was interested in trying to understand his motivation for downgrading so dramatically. It seems that after six months of trying out various apps and dealing with the fragility and complexity of the iPhone, he was ready for something simpler. Now it would be easy to dismiss this as an odd piece of youthful behaviour, but I was even more surprised when a friend of his did the same thing, selling his hard-earned iPhone and swapping it for a cast-off Nokia. To me this raised some interesting questions about technology and what influences our choices when we adopt or reject new tools. As someone in a high-technology industry, I am very familiar with best practice when it comes to the process of "gathering requirements".
A young Amish rollerblader
As consumers, too, we are well-versed in the practice of weighing up features and functionality, comparing cost-benefits of each product and typically selecting the product which offers the most functionality for the lowest price. However with the current rate of technological improvement, is such a model still relevant? Or are there other models that would fit better with today's world? One way of answering this question would be to look at communities that have a different approach to technology and community.
The Amish of Pennsylvania are an interesting example of how a culture makes choices about what it adopts and what it rejects. Contrary to popular belief, the Amish do not reject all modern technology out of hand. Nor do they rely solely on scripture or tradition to guide them. This has some fascinating outcomes. Why, for example, do the Amish permit rollerblading but ban bicycles? Similarly, they embrace high-tech materials such as carbon fibre for their horse-drawn buggies. Amish businessmen make use of electricity to power their tools, but only if it comes from a battery rather than a wire. To outsiders, these choices seem inconsistent and probably superstitious, but the reality is much more intriguing.
Even more intriguing is the fact that Amish culture is enjoying a boom, and Amish businesses thrive while their counterparts often struggle. In fact Amish small businesses have a success rate of around 95% compared with a figure of around 50% for the US as a whole.
Amish houses have telephones, but they are kept outside the family home.
Many Amish businessmen use mobile phones, but only for work.
The answer to these questions can be found in their basic approach to evaluating new technology. When first faced with a new tool or gizmo, the Amish will first engage in a debate within their community. Rather than evaluating this new technology in terms of features, functions or price, they will instead ask the question "does this bring us together or push us apart?" In The Riddle of Amish Culture author Donald Kraybill states that "The Amish employ an intuitive sense about what will build solidarity and what will pull them apart...You find state-of-the-art barbecues on some Amish porches. Here is a tool they see as increasing family coherence: Barbecues bring people together."
As learning technology experts, we are faced with similar choices on a continual basis. As well as evaluating new interfaces and approaches to learning, the advent of more mobile learning options means that more and more we are also asked to evaluate what hardware is best suited to our learners. Many experts agree that learning is very often a social activity, and that learning is greatly enhanced when it is part of a wider community. Perhaps it is time to step back and think carefully about the questions we are asking when we are evaluating any new technology. Rather than asking if a piece of technology has the required functionality, let's start by asking does it enhance learning and bring learners together or does it diminish learning and push them apart?
Bringing us together?
Or pulling us apart?
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Reply #1 on : Thu March 11, 2010, 14:33:20