Media Tetrad

Woah.

That was my initial thought after our presentation from Andrew McLuhan, grandson of Marshall McLuhan and son of Eric McLuhan. I’ve needed to take some time to really digest what he had to say and what it means to me.

The Tetrad

Andrew explained to us that his father and grandfather developed the media tetrad as a way to apply scientific laws to the topic of media and technology.

The first is that new technology or media enhances or amplifies the way we live in some way. For example, the smartphone would enhance the way we communicate with each other or find information.

Next we have reversal. The way that Andrew explained it was that every technology has a tipping point, and when you go over that tipping point you can reverse the characteristics of that technology. The point behind the smartphone was to help people stay connected, yet we are currently in a place where we are more lonely than ever before.

The third law is retrieval, which means that every new way of doing things actually brings back an old way of doing things… this one stumped me, so I asked pi.ai for some help on this one. The response was that “smartphones retrieve the functions of older technologies, such as telephones, cameras, and maps, combining them into a single device.”

Finally we have obsolecense, which means that a new technology takes over for an old technology… that doesn’t mean the old technology stops existing, but the role of it changes.. like how the the smartphone changed how we consume traditional media (magazines, CDs, television).

Can we apply this to the way we teach?

Andrew went on to share some information about Marshall’s book “City as Classroom” written in 1977. He shared that teachers didn’t like the guide because there were plenty of questions but no answers, which you can see in the preview that is linked. The point of this is that we live in a world where information is all around us, so we can’t expect to “cram” it all into our students. “You need to train their perceptive abilities to gather information for themselves.” – Andrew.

Let’s try applying the tetrad to the technology of 20th-century classrooms (again, with the help of pi.ai but re-worded by yours truly to keep things short and sweet)…

• Enhance – Schools enhance the way we learn… we can effectively teach large groups of students at the same time which is a big improvement.
• Reverse – Thought it was great at the beginning to educate large groups of students at once, it has become more and more apparent that this one-size-fits-all approach does not work. We actually do need more individualized instruction.
• Retrieve – We do retrieve more traditional methods when it comes to teaching. We use memorization, direct instruction, and books (both online and off).
• Obsolesce – With grouping students by age (grade), the idea of the one-room-schoolhouse has become obsolete.

All in all, I have to admit that this discussion left me very interested in just learning MORE about everything that I can when it comes to education and how we can continue to adapt our practices to best meet the needs of our diverse classrooms.