Bryan Smith | Ep. 65

We are surrounded by technology.  Like it or not, it impacts every day of our lives.  In schools, the approach to technology is about as varied as it can get.  Some schools use devices by the hour, others allow no devices. Then there are the smart watches students wear, the Bluetooth speakers, and the camera glasses all around us.  AI seems to grow daily with stores without check-out lines, self-driving cars, drones giving roof estimates, and on and on.  Where is this going and is AI ok?  We have a lot to talk about on this week’s Teacher Edition podcast.  

With technology,  it is so easy to get way down in the weeds or sidetracked by one particular tool or resource.  Jenny Copeland backs away from those topics and instead focuses on technology in general as it relates to us as Christian educators, to God’s Word, and ultimately to a biblical worldview.  

There is an unending variety of views on technology- from schools who ban it to families who embrace it.  The family in the pew in front of them hates it, and not only hates it, but sees it as sinful.  Where is God in all of this? Bryan Smith joins Jenny on the podcast to discuss a biblical worldview regarding technology.

Bryan addresses some controversial questions like: 

• Does God like technology? 
• What are some important things God wants us to know about technology? 
• With the rate at which technology is growing 
• What are some common misunderstandings of technology?

Bryan shares how we find these three foundational principles throughout Scripture:

1. Technology amplifies our God-given physical and mental powers. We need amplification.
2. Technology expresses values that lead to tendencies. 
3. Every technology is a medium. And every medium has a message. 

So, what do we do as Christian school educators to help make wise decisions with the use of technology? Jenny and Bryan uncover four ways to answer these genuine questions:

1. Evaluation 
2. Experimentation
3. Limitation
4. Togetherness

Bryan gives practical and biblical advice to help educators not get swept up in the current technological world, but stay grounded in God’s Word so it brings honor to God, regardless of the world around us.  

Memorable Quotes: 

“What technology amplifies, it also numbs”

“Are these values contrary to Christian values? Are these values leading me to tend to behave in ways that are not very Christlike? Having those conversations with ourselves are really important anyway.”

“Every one of these experiences, because of digital technology, can now be experienced outside of community. [It] can just be you, your phone, and your earbuds. And while that’s convenient and that does have some advantages, when you multiply that across the span of a person’s entire experience, it can be very depressing. It can lead to people feeling lonely.”

References

Neil Postman “Amusing Ourselves to Death”

Nicholas Carr “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”

John Dyer “From the Garden to the City” 

Jonathan Haidt- The Harm of Social Media

Bryan has worked in Christian education for over 30 years. He has been a classroom teacher as well as a textbook author. Currently, he serves BJU Press as director of Biblical Worldview Shaping. In this position he assists authors and teachers in the work of forming a biblical worldview in the classroom. Bryan holds a PhD in Old Testament interpretation.