Digital Humanities can bring teaching into this century

In “The Future of Thinking” by Davidson, Goldberg and Jones, it is stated that “In an increasingly customized world, we have standardized public education that is far closer to an early nineteenth-century model than a twenty-first century one.  If one purpose of formal education is to underscore what modes of learning are valued by our society, we are in oddly mismatched times, where success and failure of a school district or a student are determined by standardized tests at a time of vast potential for customized collaborative learning” (Davidson, 23).  The idea of digital, collaborative learning is not new to public education, however knowing the possibilities available and actually implementing them within classes are two different subjects altogether.  Within education the constant chatter is of differentiation to meet the needs of each individual learner, but when you ask teachers how that looks in the classroom, many will confess that it is a great idea and it is something that should be done but is not feasible while working with so many students in one class.  We (as teachers) continually know what is best for our students, but rarely feel capable of being able to act upon this knowledge.  Within a single breath, a teacher may say “We are not preparing our students for the future” and in the next breath say “I want to ban phones in my classroom because they are too distracting”.  As teachers we need to find some common ground to be able to mesh the two worlds together to truly make student learning authentic.  We live in a digital age that allows for communications with anyone across the globe!  Teachers should be jumping at the bit to incorporate these digital humanities in their classroom, yet I wouldn’t stack the lack of implementation of these resources solely on the backs of the teachers.  Administrators are at the heart of promoting and simultaneously putting the kibosh on innovative digital endeavors.  It is a lot of work just getting prepared to teach in a classroom in the normal lecture and activity format, but to try to integrate learning with a class that is on the other side of the world, as a way to implement digital humanities, is quite daunting.  First, you have to find a connection, another class from another culture, that would be willing to link with your classroom.  Then, you need to discuss with the administration if this would be allowed.  This is sometimes a sticking point, although most administrators think this type of learning is valid and useful, they don’t know if there are any restrictions to doing this within your school.  Then they are also concerned with the idea that not all students would be getting this curriculum, so is it really fair to allow some students this opportunity and not other students?  The words “fair and equitable education” are thrown out and all the time that you have spent planning this learning experience are wasted because you are now caught up in the red tape and bureaucracy of administration.  So teachers go back to doing the same teaching they have always done because that rejection hurts after investing your time and energy into a learning experience that you know would be beneficial to the students you service.  Thus teaching continually perpetuates this old model that is not supported by our current digital society.  

The teaching community has a multi-faceted problem when it comes to digital humanities, that doesn’t even concern itself with a definition for digital humanities.  First, we really need to embrace the idea of differentiation.  Differentiation for what each student in each area of the world needs to become a better learner, but also differentiation between the classrooms within our schools.  It should be accepted that not all teachers know all of the same tools and content as in depth as another instructor, therefore each class should look different in their learning of the material.  We need to stop believing in this idea that education is a cookie cutter model and that we just need to find the one right model to create the best cookies.  There is no one right answer on how to do this thing we call teaching.  Teachers know that to do our jobs well we need to be continually learning and adapting to the changes in our students and our society.  Digital humanities can be a bridge to so many ideas that we value in education: differentiation, collaboration, networking, multi-modal experiences and so much more!  There is no one model that fits all, and the sooner we release these thoughts of one way to “do” digital humanities or even to define we can embrace what our individual digital humanities might look like within our classrooms.