There is just so much in this ending paragraph that speaks volumes about those committed to maintaining the status quo or those that would be the agents of change. Time honored traditions have their place, but not at the expense of "Not" meeting the complex needs of students and preparing them for the complex world they will live in beyond their mandated school years. When I was 17-years-old beginning my senior year in high school... my social studies teacher asked, "How old will you be in the year 2000 and what do you think you will be doing?" The how old part was easy... I had done that calculation before... 36... basically the same age that my parents were then... But I had No real idea what I would be doing or exactly how I would be earning a living... While my teachers did a good job trying to prepare me for that future world they grossly underestimated the advances in technology and possibilities. The saving factor is that while they didn't see the technology boom they did plant the seeds of learning and thinking... which should be the true goal of all education... because if you can learn how to learn and think then you are prepared for future change.
Chapter Eight was filled with several different topics that really resonate with how I think about various ideas as they relate to learners and the learning environment. The title even sends my mind down the thoughtful path of what and how do different people use the very same technology tool. A good example it owning a "smart phone" when all you use it for is calls and texts a simple function that even a phone from Y2K could pull off, but wait there's more... buying and using a $600.00 dollar... Dell Laptop w 1TB hard drive to save photos, check email, and watch the Market when you are not sitting in front of your 19"flat screen w/ 1 TB hard drive with all the same photos, email, and Market access... make No mistake I'm Not judging Nor ridiculing just wondering about the thought process that leads to the need for a tech tool that provides so much more ... a rabbit hole that is hard to get out of once you start down...(and that was just the title)... the quote..."concept of technology as practice, where "technology" is construed generically as a shorthand for ways of doing things or getting things done, socially and culturally." (Chapter Eight, Page, 144), which leads me to ponder the view where many people only see technology as a shortcut or strategy rather than a useful tool that has the possibility to take you farther than you have gone before. The educators that embrace the idea of possibilities infect students with those same limitless possibilities. That is what will truly prepare students for their future world... when 90% of the people were engaged in farming for survival... farmers relied on innovations to better succeed... and when people started living longer and populations were growing Malthus claimed the world was going to run out of food in the near future, yet with only 50% of the people farming early 1900s...to in the US today where only about 3% of the people are actively farming and we are feeding more now then ever... technology and innovation aren't "shortcuts" they are the tools of survival. You define survival???? Even more they are the tools to innovation and creation.
Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives. Peter Lang, 2011.
Came across this article that seems to fit with what we have read so far and may be worth keeping in mind as we continue to read: EdWeek
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4 comments:
I love what you say about your teachers, that they "did plant the seeds of learning and thinking... which should be the true goal of all education... because if you can learn how to learn and think then you are prepared for future change." I can't say I had any teachers who stand out in my mind as having done that for me. I felt very ill-prepared for college, and my grades the first few years reflected that. You are so right that our job as educators is to get kids to THINK! I still think back to the video we watched at the beginning of this course, talking about giving kids a "big question" to work through. If we can find big questions they are interested in, they will learn such valuable skills trying to find the answers.If there are new technologies that will help them do that, then that's when we should use the technology.
Great post and the cartoons were great. I think I glazed over the add a picture part for mine, sorry all. Your chapter 8 was the most enticing to me because the mention of technology as a shortcut and that word seems to down play technology. Yes it is a shortcut, but that is an amazing thing. It allows for us to do more quicker and advance at ourselves more and more. It may be expensive, but the cost is less than the gain our civilation gets. Though it does have a limiting factors and we are close approaching that limiting factor.
I agree with you about technology being more innovation based than necessarily machine-based. The quote you picked for Ch. 7 also jumped out for me. In particular, I think sometimes the ones who are "surfing" and peddling tech integration are sometimes doing it to MAINTAIN status quo, a paradoxical idea. For example, back when we had to use ACUITY, the tests would never match up with our curriculum maps, so were never testing anything we had recently taught. The most frustrating example was when we found mistakes on the Social Studies ACUITY assessment, and called the Dept of Assessment about it. The teacher who called was told to "teach the wrong answers." She was fit to be tied! What is the point of teaching someone the wrong answers to achieve a falsely inflated test score? The better the test score, the more high performing your school is, was the thinking. Manipulation of technology in this manner really grinds my gears.
True about technology being more than a shortcut, and so what if it is? Taking less time, a valuable resource, is efficient.
"Sources of productivity depend increasingly on the application of science and technology..." (p. 126).
I love (and sometimes hate) doing open ended project based assignments with my students because they have to really think outside the box as far as what is generally expected of them in school. For example, we develop project that would use their skills in the community and they say something like, "How should we do this?" and I say, "How do you think we should do this?" and they often times struggle to answer it. Or they come up with an idea and I ask them how they would prepare for certain obstacles- which is great because we are really exploring everything. It can be challenging when, as a teacher, I feel like they are not prepared for these types of projects and they can be hard to assess but my hope is I am planting that seed of learning and thinking to benefit them in any future endeavors.
(My Game Design class is currently planning a Mario Kart tournament as a fundraiser for a big field trip! Wish me luck!)
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