Schools have caught the tech bug. Bad.

Computers, tablets, phones, and assorted "smart solutions" outnumber books and teachers. Blue-chip monoliths (Apple, Microsoft) prey upon educational institutions for over one third of their income. Other juggernauts (Google) create their own glittering "Alt-Schools," quantifying children with high-tech diagnostics and immersing them in "interactive" hallucinations of information. Meanwhile, administrators prescribe technology as a fix-all for enduring institutional problems, while bewildered students and instructors gamely struggle to integrate technology into an increasingly impoverished learning environment.

Surveying the past 30 years, this talk drives a stake in the unholy beast known as "Edtech." Far from recommending a Luddite "run-for-the-hills" solution, however, we'll demonstrate how students, parents, and instructors can recover a holistic, human-scale vision of technology as technique, teaching and learning from technology as it exists within the body.

Producer: Paul Gansky and Dan Roe

Paul Gansky, PhD, is Dean of Media Studies and Technology at the Ross School. He received his doctoral degree in Media and Communications Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research encompasses healthcare, psychotechnics, social persuasion, telecommunications policy, and industrial design. By day, he teaches courses in media history. By night, he dreams of emerald Bakelite.

Dan Roe is Assistant Director of Media at Ross Institute. He is also a cartoonist for The New Yorker and a filmmaker whose most recent work played in the Hamptons International Film Festival. He abhors a vacuum.