Created in 1932, the Dvorak Keyboard was meant to replace the current QWERTY system. The Dvorak Keyboard system was superior to the QWERTY system yet, it has not caught on as one would have thought it would. Although the Dvorak Keyboard has caught on in some work environments
(especially with computer programmers), it is still not as widely used
and accepted as the QWERTY system. The reason? According to Everett Rogers, the Dvorak Keyboard was a failed diffusion. Rogers in "Diffusion of Innovations" provides an outline for
diffusion and dissemination. A diffusion occurs when an innovation is
communicated through channels and adopted over time into a social
system. A dissemination is a diffusion that is directed and managed. When providing a diffusion of an innovation, one must think critically about how the innovation, communication channels, time, and social system will affect the adoption of the innovation. If an innovation is rejected, it usually can be traced back to a problem with one of these four categories. With the Dvorak Keyboard, the manufacturers, sales outlets, typing teachers, and typists contributed to the slow diffusion of the keyboard system. They are considered "laggards" because they refused to use the system. They made a decision to not sell keyboards with the Dvorak Keyboard. Because such a small percentage of the population made the decision for all of the consumers, it is considered an authority innovation decision. As we discuss Web 2.0 technologies and how we can incorporate them into the classroom, the following questions come to my mind: Will the Dvorak Keyboard diffusion rejection happen again? Will there be a Web 2.0 technology that will take forever to adopt because K-12 school administrators refuse to adopt it? In many innovation decisions, school administrators play similar roles to what the manufacturers and sales outlets did for the Dvorak Keyboard. In terms of the K-12 school community, the social system is defined by the decisions that a small percentage of the community makes. School administrators make authority innovation decisions all the time. Because of this fact, I believe that the answer to the above questions is yes. I can only make a guess as to which technologies will take a long time to adopt. Based on the fact that many internet sites are still not available in classrooms, I think any technology that is dependent on the web (social networks, multi-user domains, and massively multi-player online role playing games, etc.) will not make an impact on education for many many years. Your thoughts?
Dvorak Keyboard diffusion rejection... will it happen happen with Web 2.0?
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I sense your disenchantment with administrative decisions about web technology and have experienced the same doubts myself in the past. But I hesitate to go so far to say that web 2.0 will be rejected by administrations and school districts like the Dvorak keyboard. I think first that the school administration controls one critical aspect of education, the budget. New technologies do not get widely diffused into use in schools because of budget restraints. Schools need to wait until technologies are proven and have been around long enough to go down in cost. Next, when we move past budget restraints I place the focus not on administrators but on who should be the innovators in schools, the tech departments and the teachers. I would empower these individuals to be more proactive in requesting and prioritizing new technologies.
Dvorak would have required everyone to be slowly retrained to do the same thing a fraction faster, and that's probably the biggest nail in its coffin.
These Web2 tools on the other hand allow us to do some things much faster and other things that were impossible, so there would be more attraction to adopt them. But they also require more than retraining of teachers; new hardware, IT policies, class and grading policies, and new teaching behaviors...
Web 2.0 looks like bigger costs and bigger benefits than Dvorak was to QWERTY, so it gains more importance as an issue and I think it will be tried more in classrooms because of the scope. Sure it may not catch on, but it will get more chances than a tiny mindless change like Dvorak.
Things get adopted when people get paid. Convincing someone of a product's worth is much easier when benefits are involved. The bigger the incentive, the faster the adoption. Medical doctors dispense one brand of drug over the other because pharmaceutical companies pay to have their business. Large technology companies buy up and cannibalize smaller companies with promising technologies because profits are at stake. Schools, on the other hand, are part of a giant government bureaucracy where an immeasurable number of people are required to make one decision at an immeasurably slower pace with the resulting implementation of that decision being immeasurably less effective. So in terms of above questions- web technologies are making an impact on education NOW, just not to the same degree or effect in the context of public schooling as in RL (i.e. life outside the prison model, or industrial education complex). Diffusion is difficult in highly insular and controlled systems. If schools don't start loosening up and start practicing techno-fluency, they're going to have to start installing hyperbaeric chambers (along with the metal detectors) at their points of entry/exit so students can transition from school to real life without getting the bends.