Students want change on a daily basis. We assume that all these wants and needs are positive, however as much fun and stimulation as it all is, does it make learning happen or are we being blinded by the ME generation. Surely the role of the adults, teachers and administrators is to apply experience, wisdom and the braking system of reality. The cost of all these rapid changes may not balance with the benefits.
Just because kids can chat online and share their assignments, resources and references, do they do any better work, do they learn anything other than how to plaigirise? Has society progressed? Do we have global peace, care, equality etc?Certainly not
Have we assessed the social ramifications?
For example kids prefer to text each other than meet. Breaking off with a girlfriend is now a text that says 'your dumped'. Kids hide in their rooms and 'study' online. Most of the time they only have virtual connectedness, lack family time and for an increasing number of kids, the real/hyper-real and virtual have become very blurred. We have an explosion of mental illness and people with lack of connectivity shooting up schools. I think that we need to be cautious as adolescents lack the maturity to really know what they want and need.
We have an explosion of materialism and consumerism that is environmentally and economically unsustainable.
Whilst our political systems are held ransom to lobbyists where is the democratic debate about where our resources are to go. Is the latest fast broadband more important than emergency services, illegral migant housing, neo-natal health care- etc.
This is an interesting article that reviews outcomes for laptop programmes for schools to cross the digital divide(Hu 2007). Kids are using laptops and Internet access to cheat, download porn and play games. There is no measurable improvement on academic achievement given the technology availability. The cost is not giving any value for money. It won’t stop me using a laptop or accessing the Internet but I think that these are important issues for debate.
Hu, W (2007) Seeing no Progress, Some schools drop laptops New York Times May 4 retrieved 6/5/2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
1 comment:
Hi Joyce I was going over the posts from Module 2 and found your first post and in seraching for the references for "Cope & Kalanstzis, (2000) Investigating Identity and Power relationships" I stumbled on your blog. It makes interesting reading as this formed the basis of a post you made on the course and at the time I wrote a reply but never actually posted it. In light of our recent discussion on disucssions :) I do now feel able to do so. I sent you a link some time ago to the fischbowl project. If you did not look at the "What if" presentation before now I do urge you to do so now http://www.lps.k12.co.us/schools/arapahoe/fisch/fischbowlpresentations.htm
I pose the question what if all the adults involved in education has imposed their wisdom and applied the brakes to bring us back to their reality thus far?
I find it vey difficult that you ask the question about Global peace in the same space as a disucssion on the uses and application of ICTs. Surely all of education and indeed society has a moral obligation towards that. And as for the insinuation that ICT is responsilbe for teaching students how to plaigirise?? Plagarism has alwasy existed, but systems now such as turnitin.com make catching it easier!!
Surely parents have to take responsibility for what their kids are doing when they "study" in their rooms. Indeed many of the issues you raise are societal ones and could be attributed to many factors but to single out the availablity and use of technology and link it to them is unfair.
An excellent article by Sing (see http://edt.ite.edu.sg/ite_conf/int_conf/pdf/et02.pdf)sums up much of this debate saying "there is definite evidence to
suggest that multimedia does improve learning effectiveness in certain situations.
However the key point is to understand those key situations and tailor multimedia
content for those situations." He outlines how using mulitmedia with students requires careful planning, students can self pace, it allows for interactivity etc. All of these things are positive and to be encoraged in education and if technology makes them easier to provide then bring it on!!
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