As the name
of Charles M. Reigeluth
and Roberto Joseph’s article, “Beyond technology integration: The
case for technology transformation,” implies, they discuss the progress and
importance of using technology in the classroom to transform how we teach. With the change in the needs of our society,
especially in terms of the types of jobs available, there is an obvious need to
use our technology in ways to facilitate these needs efficiently. As Reigeluth and Joseph describe,
“assembly-line jobs have largely disappeared, and employers, even in the
manufacturing sector, are now looking for people who can solve problems, take
initiative, and offer diverse perspectives as part of teams.” They relate this to the previous need for
specializing in what (and, in some cases, whom) we teach to meet the specific
needs of our culture to changing our schools to help shape all students to meet
their full potential and not limit them to one specific path.
I could not
agree more with this aspect of Reigeluth and Joseph’s article. With our every changing society, especially
considering drastic changes seems to be happening at a higher rate than ever
before, we need to help our students develop skills that can help them in a
wide variety of areas. Because we don’t
know what the future will hold for our students, both years down the road and
even next week, we cannot pre-sort our students for specific vocations.
I do,
however, tend to disagree with the apparent abruptness (or at least apparent to
me) of their suggested transformation.
By saying “educators must recognize that using technology to support
what they are already doing is not a productive course of action when compared
to using technology to transform their teaching to a paradigm that is
attainment-based rather than time-based,” they give off the feeling that some
of the current actions teachers are doing have no benefit and their teaching
needs to be totally transformed. Other
areas in the article are a little softer, and they may not have meant it as
blunt as I am reading it, but I feel like the authors may be placing too much
faith in the full application of technology in the classroom. With the constant progress of technology, it
can be hard to fully develop and implement effective uses of new technologies
in the classroom. I am hesitant to say
that our old practices have no use in our current classrooms, and instead I
feel that the old and the new should supplement each other. Maybe that was the intended message of the
authors and I lost that message as I neared the end of the article, but this
more blunt statement toward the end makes me think that some may be jumping the
gun and fully depending on some technologies that are still being developed.
Neil
Postman’s article “Of Luddites, Learning, and Life,” he puts a more negative
spin on the progress of technology. One
sentence that I believe epitomizes his feelings states that “because
the technologies are there, we often invent problems to justify our
using them.” And at the risk of sounding
like an old curmudgeon (note: I am only 24 years old), I tend to agree with
him…to a point. I have experienced a
variety of ways in which we use technology in the classroom for the sake of
using technology, not necessarily for the sake of improving learning. In addition, I’ve actually seen the overuse
of technology harming our students’
learning. I am a math teacher, and I
tend to be an opponent of the use of calculators in the classroom. Don’t get me wrong: calculators can do
awesome things. They make things easier
to do and thus make efficient use of our time.
But I have come to find that the prevalence of calculators in the
classroom has prevented students from learning some of the basics. The calculator was invented by those that
wanted to make a machine to reduce the time they spent solving problems on
paper. However, they could still do such
problems on paper if they needed. I have
seen a scary number of students that immediately do any math problem they can
on a calculator, which not only can slow them down for some of the simpler
problems, but it also prevents them from actually knowing what is going
on. I even notice the effects of this in
my own abilities. My mother, a retired
history teacher who admits to having difficulty in the math classes she took,
can do a variety of math problems in her head faster than I can. I graduated with a degree in mathematics, yet
my history teacher mother can do head math faster than I can. My guess: I used calculators early on in my
learning process while she didn’t. The
calculator solved a problem of time, but may have also created a problem of not
truly understanding concepts. So before
people begin to question why I am in the Educational Technology program, let me
say this: I believe using technology is important for our progression as
educators, but we also need to be sure we are not using technology in place of
learning and understanding.
I
do find Postman’s question of “What is the problem to which the new
technologies are the solution?” overly pessimistic. Does every advancement have to solve a
problem? Is it really so bad if we make
something that is already fairly fast faster?
Not every form of progress can or needs to solve a problem. In fact, even if a new technology does not
solve any problems currently, who is to say it won’t solve any future problems,
or even lead to other developments that can solve any current or future
problems? Even if a new technology does
not seem to have any apparent benefit at the moment, as long as it
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