Digital Life Together: The Challenge of Technology for Christian Schools

DIGITAL LIFE TOGETHER: The Challenge of Technology for Christian Schools by David I. Smith, Kara Sevensma, Marjorie Terpstra, and Steven McMullen. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020. 377 pages. Paperback; $29.99. ISBN: 9780802877031. *All of us who are invested in Christian education, parents, administrators, building committees, boards, and especially teachers, have struggled with the role that digital devices should play in our schools and in the lives of our children. For this reason, Digital Life Together is a gift to the Christian education community in North America. This book is a careful, detailed, and comprehensive look at how a couple of Christian schools chose a 1-1 device-to-student strategy and lived with the technology in this intensive way. Regardless of where one falls on the spectrum, from full adoption to complete rejection of digital technology in schools, this book will broaden and deepen your discussions. *The authors chose a Protestant Christian school system with approximately 1,500 students (labeled "Modern Christian Schools" for purposes of anonymity) across several campuses that had a mature 1-1 device-to-student approach to technology as the primary focus of their study. For comparison, they also looked at another Midwestern Protestant Christian school system from the same tradition and also surveyed graduates of Christian schools at a nearby Christian liberal arts college. Classroom observations, surveys, focus groups, case studies, and document analysis were used to "shed light on lived experience and changing beliefs and practices of members of a Christian school community embracing new technologies" (p. 26). An appendix on the research methods is included for those interested. *In order to get specific, the bulk of the book is divided into five sections: mission, teaching and learning, discernment, formation, and community. More detailed questions are raised to broaden and deepen the observations of how technology affected students at these schools. These questions are the anchors for the relatively short chapters that comprise the book. *As is befitting such an exploration, the authors are appropriately agnostic about both the wisdom and the efficacy of the intense use of technology in education. They highlight where there are successes from the school's perspective. For instance, they relay an example in which the mission-driven rationale for adopting the technology has made its way into the mind of a student (p. 46). Likewise, graduates from the focus schools indicate that the "technology program at Modern Christian Schools may be having some positive impact in terms of helping students manage their screen time" (pp. 166-67). Failures are also observed and noted. Most surveyed students acknowledged that the technology allowed them to find answers without really understanding them and led them to look for easy answers to problems. More than one third of them agreed that the technology encouraged them to skim over material rather than reading deeply (p. 128). The technology was also observed to promote unhealthy practices of task completion. Students were inclined to get work done quickly and then shop online, or use class time to shop in the anticipation that they would complete the work later (p. 132). Many other examples of positive and negative outcomes could be cited. *Perhaps one of the most intriguing lines of questions for administrators was how overtly Christian mission statements that were central in the adoption of technology could be co-opted by non-Christian aspirations as one moves out from the administration to the broader school community. "The way the mission was understood in the wider community was also shaped by broader social aspirations and implied stories about success" (p. 53). In reference to literature sent to the alumni community, the authors note that, "Appealing to existing community desires and values, including those focused on material advantage, was a way to build support for the program ... The focus group data suggest that this strategic communication choice left its mark" (p. 59). In the case of Modern Christian Schools, this uncomfortable mission slippage had to do with technology, but the same phenomena could occur with other program launches. *Digital Life Together is impressive in many ways. It is a careful, detailed account that remains highly readable and intriguing. Its structure, including the questions at the end of each chapter, makes it amenable to individual pondering and to group reading. Although there are detailed endnotes with citations, it would be helpful to have an appendix summarizing further readings on the general topic of technology, and of technology in education more specifically. As an educator, the book leaves me with many more questions--a real accomplishment in my estimation. *Reviewed by Paul Triemstra, Principal of Ottawa Christian School, Ottawa, ON K2J 3T1.

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