Eva Bailén is an engineer, mathematics and technology teacher. Thanks in large part to her professional profile, reading Connected and Empowered. Technology as an educational ally? (ed. Platform), does not flood with anxiety or feelings of guilt. Hers is not an alarmist book about the perversity of digital and the harm that technology is causing to minors, but rather an instruction manual for the proper use of it, very well documented and supported by her experience as a mother, teacher and expert.
In the face of prohibitions and the demonization of screens, Bailén advocates for responsible and constant digital education, which begins with adults themselves. And when asked if technology can be an ally in education, he has no doubt: yes, but applying parental authority, curiosity and, above all, common sense.
How did this book come about?
In 2010, when my kids were little, I started a blog about technology. I already saw that they were very attracted to cell phones and tablets and that made me curious. I wanted to learn and accompany them: see what they played, what pages they visited... All this, together with my interest in education and the visibility I have had through the homework campaign, has led me to this third book.
When reading it, you can see that he likes technology, that he doesn't think it is a monster that is going to ruin the lives of our children; It is not an apocalyptic book. Is it the difference with the many that are published on this topic?
Unfortunately, I think that this negative, apocalyptic, yes, idea of technology sells more: that “we are already fed up”, let's ban it and thus prevent our children from being abducted by screens. No, my book is in a completely different key: accepting that this has come to stay and that it will get worse. Among the educational gaps is the digital divide, which means that digital is important in education. It is time to accept it and, as parents, train ourselves and accompany our children in the responsible use of technology. Because if not, they will do it with other people.
We have gone very quickly from bragging about being a child with an iPad in class to considering screens almost like junk food... Is there no middle ground?
It is true that there was a furor to show who was more innovative, a madness to use technology in the classroom, when what you really have to look for is for it to be a tool that accompanies you as a teacher and serves as a learning resource. It is not the technological tools that make you have an innovative classroom, but how they are used.
Can they be used well?
Of course: if common sense is applied and they are used for things like making a classroom more inclusive, adapting to different learning styles and rhythms, facilitating coexistence, arousing curiosity and, ultimately, getting closer to the world of young people, who are more digital, because there technology makes sense. But there is no need to give a five-year-old child an iPad either: there is an age for everything and it has already been seen that it could not replace a notebook and a pencil.
It is curious that technology, which began as something elitist, serves as an inclusive tool. But, in a new twist, the elites of Silicon Valley today educate their children without screens, as if they were toxic...
I would take this with a grain of salt: I think it is true, but it gives a very unreal image. That a person with such a high social and economic level takes his children to a Waldford-type school, without screens, well yes, it is a lifestyle... But that child has his life figured out! What seems dangerous to me is that this message is transmitted to people whose children are going to have to earn a living and use technology.
You have been a teacher in a high school: how have you managed the incorporation of digital in class?
I have had tensions in the classroom with cell phones, yes, but technologies helped me a lot in teaching. If you are a person with the necessary skills, you can communicate with your students, use different platforms, upload assignments, etc. In my experience as a classroom tool, technology has been fantastic. Also, I repeat, to make the content more inclusive.
And as a mother? How have you managed technology at home?
Well, as a mom and a person with almost unlimited access to mobile devices! When my children were little I worked in a telephone company, in the terminal laboratory: the everyday thing was that they gave you several mobile phones so that you could take them and test them. So it was easy for them to handle them. Although I always did it very carefully: I told them to use them while I was present and thus I listened to them, so as not to miss anything relevant. If they played a game, for example, they would tell me if someone was messing with them, and I would explain to them that they could block that user; That is, it began to give them the tools to be able to be and defend themselves in their online life. I also didn't leave them a SIM card until they finished sixth grade and went on to high school.
That is the age at which, until recently, children were given their first mobile phone: today there is talk of delaying this acquisition as much as possible. What do you think?
Experts on addiction to new technologies recommend delaying it until the age of sixteen. It seems unrealizable to me, the social pressure is too strong. I am in favor of educating and accompanying and, of course, of establishing limits and rules such as not using the cell phone at meals and leaving it outside the room before going to sleep. And you have to do it when they are little, when they are most receptive. When they are teenagers they no longer pay as much attention to you.
He talks about setting limits, but we are in times of parenting where a “no” is almost a form of abuse. How is a generation of fathers and mothers who are not used to them going to set limits?
Well, that is a problem, but it is not that we spend all day setting limits and rules and punishments. The important thing is that there are red lines that children cannot jump. There are not many of them, but they are important, in everyday life and in digital life. For example, technology cannot affect your studies, your hours of sleep, your practice of sports...
Minors are called “addicts,” but what about parents?
You have to be a model and act how we want them to act. You have to be the first to leave cell phones outside the room and not use them at the table, for example. Or not sharing information about your children on networks, creating a digital footprint that will remain there. Sharenting, as this practice is called, is such an unconscious and selfish act that it already sets a precedent: if you have posted half of your life on social networks: What do you expect your child to do when they are there?
“Critical thinking” is a recipe for managing digital activity, but the construction of this critical thinking is a slow process, which implies maturity: How can we help them acquire it in the faster and earlier digital world?
Right now, with the explosion of artificial intelligence, critical thinking would be to question everything you see and read on the internet. Ask yourself why something comes to you, why they are asking you for what they are asking for. Know that all the information you give will be to benefit you, that half of the information or images will be manipulated or have an intention that is not what you believe. I think that if you already go ahead with that, and look for tools to contrast and even cut those chains of hoaxes that abound so much, you have a lot to gain.
Speaking of misunderstandings; His campaign to rationalize homework was mistaken, in some quarters, as a campaign to suppress it. How did this topic end?
I started it in 2015 and there was a lot of media interest: a bill, which was approved in the Madrid Assembly, I took the campaign to Congress... And it seems that there were a few years in which the intensity of the duties decreased a little or, for At the very least, there was a certain awareness before putting them on. But now my children are in college and I don't know how things are going. Although there are still parents who write to me, asking what they can do.
“Before, afternoons were for playing and not for doing homework,” he said. But this lack of time: Doesn't it have more to do with the children's agendas, crammed with extracurricular activities, than with homework itself?
When I started the campaign, my three children were in the same school, in Primary: the eldest did her homework in one hour, happily, but the boy never finished: three hours every day! I understood that they had to do some necessary homework to review. But having a child for three hours every day... Did I really have to copy the sentences, make an outline every time I finished? What I asked was to lighten them, adapt them, so that he could learn and want to go to school, not hate it. I met many people who were in the same situation. In any case, it is true that extracurricular activities and the pace of life of the parents do not help.
In Catalonia we were pioneers in educational innovation, working on projects, banishing textbooks and memorization, with technology playing a key role and the teacher almost like a “coach”… The results have been quite disappointing. How do you explain it?
During the pandemic, in schools where technology had been implemented and there were no textbooks, they switched from in-person to virtual teaching from one day to the next; At that time we said: blessed technology! But I have detected that after covid, project work has been diluted, I don't really know why. Yes, I see that it is an overexertion. For a teacher with twenty teaching hours a week to prepare classes without textbooks... You are missing hours! I believe that to allow innovation, either support measures are taken in parallel or, with the teaching load that teachers have, it is impossible.
At an educational level, which technological tool do you find most positive?
To me, all communication tools, like Zoom, with which we are doing this interview, seem fantastic. And then there are others that I really like: like Canva, because they bring creativity and graphic design closer. And lastly, ChatGPT, I love it!
But it is very controversial among teachers... Why do you like it so much?
A person can be much more efficient by knowing how to use artificial intelligence. With the right questions and common sense you can learn and do jobs that would take you many months. We have a license and everyone in the family uses it. There you also have to use critical sense, because ChatGPT makes a lot of mistakes and you have to complement and modify the content. But, as a starting point it can be very useful for many things. It is true that at an educational level it is a challenge. But what a tool like this asks of you is that, as a teacher, you raise the bar. There is going to be a new gap, that of those who do not know how to use artificial intelligence.
