Cartoon taken from Paul Silli's blog post "Why Should School Districts Invest in Technology."
“Bill Gates says, ‘Wait till you can see what your computer can become.’ But it’s you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work—not the damn fool computer.” —Kurt Vonnegut
“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last semester I picked up a $1,000 check from City College for a faculty development workshop that I participated in over the winter break. The workshop was designed to introduce interested faculty to the uses of technology in the classroom and was, no surprise, sponsored by Verizon. As a struggling graduate student who finds himself consistently behind on the rent, I was delighted to receive the money, but part of me feels bad (well almost) since it turns out I really have no intention now, nor did I ever, of using any more technology in my classroom than I normally would. In fact, instead of instilling in me a sense of possibility and excitement, the workshop made me deeply suspicious of the supposed pedagogical value of technology in general. Although it helped me realize that there are, indeed, several kinds of fascinating and interesting things you can do with web applications both in and out of class, I remained unconvinced that using those technologies would actually help my students to better learn the things that matter: how to be, for instance, a thoughtful and contemplative person capable of formulating, analyzing, critiquing, and communicating difficult and original ideas.
The leader of the workshop was, I am quite proud to say, an old student of mine from Hunter College who is now getting his PhD at the Graduate Center and is the head of the Writing Center at my campus. For the entire eight hours, he led the faculty members present that day through a series of exercises that were meant to introduce us to web-based applications that we could use to “help students learn.” While I was familiar with most of the applications and platforms that were being introduced, I had never thought of using any of them in the classroom. From Google and Wikipedia, to YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, and Facebook, we talked about the potential pedagogical value of these various information, publishing, and social networking platforms. It was a stretch, but we did our best to articulate the different ways we might use these programs or services in our classrooms. The idea of using blogs and Facebook pages was especially popular, as was the idea of using YouTube videos as learning tools.
After the workshop I felt obligated to think more about the ways that I could use some of this technology to help my students learn better, and, since I had to write a report on precisely that subject in order to qualify for the stipend, I spent a good amount of time contemplating my options. The more I wrote and the more I reflected on my thoughts, however, the more I realized that I didn’t want to use any technology in my classroom: not this semester, not next, and if I could help it, not ever. In fact, the more I tried to justify and find a place for technology, the more I kept thinking about what was being lost. Sure, showing a YouTube video is a fine way to generate conversation, but it is the conversation, and not the act of watching a video that matters, and in an English class, where the subject is language itself, does it really make sense to show a video? Technology, no doubt, provides a vast array of new options, but do we really need more of these kinds of options, and do any of them actually aid in the learning process or simply provide us with a temporary distraction from it? What are we sacrificing when we introduce new technologies into the curriculum? And what kinds of messages are we sending to our students?
In an age of increasing technological innovation and scientific breakthrough it is easy to get caught up in the idea that, as educators, we must prepare our students for the brave new worlds that await them. As our lives and our relationships with others become more and more mediated through the use of technology, it seems reasonable that we would teach our students how to use those new technologies to their advantage. To question this assumption, to ask why seems like a selfish, almost churlish endeavor, designed to actively cheat our students out of their right to self-empowerment. Nonetheless, once the question is out of the box the answers become increasingly complicated.
First of all, the use of web technology in the classroom not only assumes that it will remain a viable and useful tool (rather than, say, going the way of the Dewey Decimal System and the card catalog) but that the use of such technologies are a social good. The idea that the university or academy, funded by Verizon, should feel obliged to keep pace with the entrepreneurial fits of the World Wide Web, or that we should feel ashamed not to be on top of the latest marketing device disguised as a communication platform, seems shortsighted.
Indeed, one of the things that frightens me about the often uncritical embrace of technology in the classroom is the way that it potentially dehumanizes the educational experience, where students spend more and more time both in and out of class looking at video screens, computer monitors, Blackberries, and iPhones, rather than looking at the world around them, talking to each other, or most importantly, spending time alone with their thoughts. Sure, constant e-mail, tweeting, texting, and ironic Facebook updates may feel like meaningful communication, but what’s really being communicated besides a desperate desire for the type of community that, without the distance digital communication makes possible, would already exist?
What concerns me most, however, is not what we are introducing into our classrooms—after all, I admit a preference for polished, word processed documents instead of smudgy handwritten ones—but what we might be losing. I’d like to make the argument that, despite our increasingly technological lives, or perhaps because of them, the creation and conservation of technology-free spaces where people can, and are encouraged to communicate face-to-face, free of distraction, with nothing more than their unique temperaments and their private store of knowledge and eloquence, seems more and more important to me. Our students are already attention-deprived and overloaded. The idea of forcing them back onto the Internet, especially to privately owned, for-profit websites like Facebook and YouTube, as part of their schoolwork, seems at best counterproductive and at worst incredibly irresponsible, even unethical. Instead, shouldn’t we be encouraging our students to carve out spaces of time for themselves that are free from the distractions of the market and the market driven popular culture that typifies the Internet. Shouldn’t we be encouraging them to be skeptical and critical of this mass culture, or better yet, encouraging them to ignore it completely. Should we not be inviting them instead to think in full sentences; to write more than 140 characters at a time; and to have the self-reliance and self-sufficiency to be alone with themselves and their thoughts for more than the seven or eight hours they spend unconscious each night.
As a profession we seem to have thoughtlessly embraced the idea of technology precisely because we see it as a way of making learning easier and more accessible for more of our students. Obviously—the logic goes—our students are comfortable using the Internet and social networking tools, so why not allow them to use those skills to learn? This kind of thinking is common among instructors who embrace popular culture because they think it will help their students “relate” to the course material. These are the same teachers who spend class time screening Hollywood versions of Shakespeare because students are supposedly incapable of understanding Elizabethan English or who teach rap lyrics or song lyrics as poetry, because it’s easier for students to get the difference between a tenor and a vehicle when it’s Tupac or Bob Dylan speaking than when it’s Dylan Thomas or Langston Hughes. But our calling as educators extends beyond merely providing our students with opportunities to learn material. As educators we are also responsible for providing our students with experiences which they would not otherwise have access to, such as the experiences that result from finding solutions to difficult problems, engaged and thoughtful conversation, and collegial argument. But even more than this, it is important that we offer our students alternatives to the kinds of experiences provided by the technology of mass media. If we are going to insist on teaching them how to get by in the corporate world they’ve been given, we need to at least teach them that other worlds are still possible.
What a great post, James.
I couldn’t agree more with large parts of what you’ve said. In particular, I frequently find myself uncomfortable or even outright disgusted with the way that university decisions – and especially those related to the “scary” world of computers and technology – are made with more consideration to the marketing of corporate entities than to their utility to the work of the college. I’m also skeptical (perhaps surprisingly, given my gadget nerdery) about the potential faddishness of many of the technologies being adopted – though it’s worth mentioning that just because a particular technology is fleeting doesn’t imply that it shouldn’t be used. Wasn’t Dewey Decimal useful?
I have to take issue with some of your core arguments, though. You and I are in complete agreement about the value of human community, and I’d go even further to say that fostering variously meaningful types of communities is the raison d’être of education broadly speaking. But your claim that technology is dehumanizing and ultimately anti-community seems wrongheaded to me for several reasons.
First of all, the kind of community that you’re advocating – the kind typified by face-to-face interaction mediated through talking and body language – is not technology-free at all. The technology of language is perhaps the most disruptive technology of all. I can imagine re-pitching one of your lines as an argument against linguistic technology: “Sure, constant talking may feel like meaningful communication, but what’s really being communicated besides a desperate desire for the type of community that, without the dishonesty, ambiguity, potential for misunderstanding, and non-tactililty that linguistic communication makes possible, would already exist?” The very same lament – that a new technology is making communication more opaque, less human, less authentic – could be leveled against the technology of writing as well, and in fact was, by Plato in the Phaedrus. Web technology is not sui generis in this way but is another in a string of disruptive communication technologies, each of which must be justified on its own merits – not on its cohesion, or lack thereof, with the previous technological paradigm.
Second, while I share your concern that many of the supposed pedagogical benefits of certain digital technologies are mere preparation for corporate dronehood in disguise, we should be careful to separate the technology from its advocates where possible. There is a big difference, ethically speaking, between having your students work in a commercial environment like Facebook and having them work in a university- or personally-owned installation of WordPress or something like that. You might argue that even free/open-source software has its own ties to corporate interests, but that doesn’t mean that Linux = Windows. Again, the value of a given digital technology should be evaluated on its own merits.
There isn’t the space in this comment box to address the question of which digital technologies really do have their own merits for teaching, learning and scholarship. But I will make a general observation. I value the traditional face-to-face classroom (and conversation) a great deal. The medium, in this case, is not transparent and is not irrelevant: the physicality of meatspace, and the kinds of communicative strategies that it requires, enhances the content of the class (/conversation) in very real ways. That said, I do not value the medium in and of itself. If there were a way to achieve all the same benefits of face-to-face interaction in a digital environment, on principle (ie, sentimentality aside) I’d have to be agnostic about whether this digital environment or F2F was better. The key is to recognize the things that are independently valuable about a medium, and to avoid lumping them in with all the negative things about the medium. It may very well be that the kind of communication that happens on Twitter (for example) is *better* at achieving a certain kind of communicative goal than F2F communication. The only way to know is to (a) evaluate the kinds of communicative goals you independently value, and (b) evaluate the ways in which different technologies – speech, writing, the web – can meet those goals. To reject something just because it has a USB port is to miss out on whatever specific possibilities are offered by a given medium.
James, thanks for taking the time to articulate your position about these issues so clearly. I appreciate that. You’re obviously concerned with your students learning, and you’ve been thoughtful about the implications of technology in our classrooms.
That said, I largely disagree with the position you’ve presented here. Two reasons. First, you’re thoroughly skeptical of the general idea of technology in our classrooms. While I grant that skepticism should be a healthy portion of any critique of socio-cultural systems, I don’t think it’s useful as the bulk of one’s position. I don’t mean to suggest that a critic shouldn’t argue against something, to even argue against something completely. I do mean to suggest that it would be useful if your articulated position in this post was a little more generous about people’s motivations for using these technologies.
I think you’re making some unfair assumptions about the way people use these technologies. For instance, you write that “…in an English class, where the subject is language itself, does it really make sense to show a video? …do any of them actually aid in the learning process or simply provide us with a temporary distraction from it?” When you offer up this example, it’s difficult to know what you actually mean by the showing of a YouTube video. I’m not sure how it is a distraction from language or the learning process. People all over the world are increasingly turning to video as a mode of self-expression, political critique, creative production, and personal daily communication. Yes, the world of “video screens, computer monitors, Blackberries, and iPhones” is partially here, and it’s becoming more ubiquitous every day. And I agree that the increased use of these sorts of technologies does reduce, to some extent, the frequency of face-to-face interaction. But nowhere in your post do your demonstrate the same sort of detailed reflection about what, exactly, is being lost as face-to-face communication is reduced? And what, exactly do you mean by face-to-face communication? I have much more face-to-face communication with my friend who lives several hours away in Tennesee than I would without skype or video sharing sites. And I’m far more productive talking face-to-face (via WWW screens) with academic and creative collaborators hundreds and thousands of miles away. We still use inflection, body language, and facial expression in much the same way as we would if we were meeting in person. Yet we can’t shake hands, hug, get lunch together, etc. But if I want or feel a need to do those things, I’m more than capable of pushing my chair back from the desk and getting a cup of coffee with a good friend who lives right here in town. What I’m getting at is that screen technologies are increasinly becoming regular communication technologies. And writing technologies, too, if you’re willing to expand your definition of writing to encompass the technologies with which we do it. Web pages, video production, audio production, and other digital technoligies such as Facebook, Twitter, wikis and blogs involve a lot of writing. That writing just doesn’t look quite the same as it used to. But it’s still language, what you claim (with which I agree) is the real content of an English class. So, if you’re going to appeal to my sense of what is lost, I need a little more to go on than nostalgia. I have no nostalgia for the cost, speed, or portability of traditional textbooks, term papers, or blackboards. My question is, do you?
Maybe you do. And that’s fine. Really, it is. But I’m not sure if that’s a position you take because of your own values or what you identify as in the best interests of your students. Maybe you think that your positions are in the best interests of your students. If so, that’s fine. My position is simply different.
You also write that “As a profession we seem to have thoughtlessly embraced the idea of technology precisely because we see it as a way of making learning easier and more accessible for more of our students.” Your tone here sends mixed messages. The first half of your sentence is insulting to those who’ve worked hard and thoughtfully about why they’re bothering to introduce contemporary technologies and practices into their classrooms. I’m just wondering about why you suggest that these practices as “thoughtless”? And then in the same sentence, you suggest that the practices are naive, though well intentioned. I’m not sure what sort of audience you think will find this tone convincing.
You also suggest that the technologies you’re discussing serve as a distraction from “spending time alone with their thoughts.” Hmmm. No time alone with their thoughts. And the technologies reduce the frequency of human contact. Possibly a contradiction, depending on what you mean by “alone” and human interaction. But I want to say that traditionally (all the way back to Plato) writing has been conceptualized as a way of making language material in a way that allows us to work with it in specific ways. Sometimes those discussions are about memory. Sometimes distance. Sometimes formality, legality, collaboration, or revision. Digital technologies, too, pursue these same sorts of functionalities. Again, they just look different. I’m not sure how writing in a diary is different that writing in a private blog or in a web-based word processor or in a video diary. I use my blog, albeit a public one, to reckon with my own thoughts. To clarify. To challenge myself. To engage other texts that simply thinking about them doesn’t lend itself to because of time, distribution, or sheer size. Again, these are all ways of conceptualizing the technologies of which you’re critical in ways that still maintain many of the values and functions of traditional pen-and-paper, or even word processors.
Clearly, your post struck a nerve with me. And maybe that was it’s point. A polemic. That’s fine. They have their value, and certainly so does your post. But I find your position potentially as dangerous to our students’ educations as is the “thoughtless” adoption of technologies. You continually priviledge conservative, established values associated with writing and education. Clearly they are inline with those you’ve already adquired and serve you well. And learning new technologies and strategies is much work. Often much harder for generations farther removed from actual enrollment in the educational system. So, in the spirit of a polemic, it is on this ground, that I’m questioning the motivation and position from which you’ve articulated these views.
I’m sure that we can continue a spirited conversation about these issues, and I look forward to it. If I have offended, I apologize. My intent is merely to annoy or needle you in hopes of getting you to be more specific about what, exactly, is gained and lost with the adoption of digital technologies in educational contexts, and why what is lost is more important than what is gained. It is easy to suggest that we are losing something as we adopt new technologies. Certainly there would be no argument there. But why is it that you value it so much, and in what ways do emerging digital technologies keep us from those values and products?
I agree with the comments above on several points, and especially the issue taken with distinguishing printed matter on paper from other forms of technology. Words bound on paper have a longer history, and there sure is a bias for this particular technology in academia. One reason for this is that we’re teaching the essay, the research paper, as foundational to a liberal arts education, and blogs, twitters, wikis, etc. are seen as an addendum. How can students become proficient at a skill they hardly practice outside the classroom? And, I do think that what is lost beyond that particular, and particularly academic, skill is the duration of attention that it takes to focus on reading lengthier forms than twitters. I don’t want people to lose the ability to focus on another person’s carefully crafted perspective, in theory or fiction, for more than ten minutes at a time.
How could we make an argument, though, that this skill has relevance for finance and accountant majors? We won’t get very far in finding the relevance in this kind of practice if we don’t bother to see the relevance in the work of people referred to in this conversation as “corporate drones.” My students were savvy enough to guess that professors have a vested interest in publication, that our careers are made partly through citation, and that printed materials are a part of this legacy. They’re also savvy enough to know that the 80 dollar textbook that is mandatory for the class is not necessarily the best form or content through which to learn. Verizon may not be an altruistic parter in academia, but neither is McGraw-Hill.
First off, I would like to thank both Ryan and Boone for their thoughtful and extensive comments on this post, and, in response to Ryan, say that I am not even remotely insulted or offended by anything that was said. In fact I am delighted by the incredible collegiality displayed by the both of the respondents. I expected plenty of criticism when I wrote this post. Indeed, the reason I posted it to this blog is precisely because I know many of the readers of this site are interested in technology and pedagogy and what better audience to warn about the dangers of overzealous technology use both in and out of the classroom.
As an English teacher I agree with Boone that language is indeed a powerful technology and not one that we should readily throw aside. However, analogies about writing and appeals to Plato’s “Phaedrus” (everyone appeals to Plato’s “Phaedrus” when they want to argue the inevitability of technology and the ignorance of those who might oppose it) seem to dismiss the real and present dangers of technology as just another turning point in a long history of human development. A better analogy, perhaps, is global climate change. Sure, we saw several periods of warming and cooling in the history of our species and our species (that is, the most recent Homo Sapien incarnation of “us”) easily adapted to most of them, but what we are witnessing now is something very different, and I fear, something which has already gotten beyond us and which we are already going to pay a terrible price for. Our current use of technology is very similar to global warming and if we don’t pay attention now we may find that many of the things we valued and cared for and that gave us such pleasure are simply gone like the arctic ice sheets. Writing, reading, and literacy were an extremely slow process, taking hundreds, if not thousands of years to reach levels of even marginal adult literacy. But since the use of the Internet became widespread our lives have changed dramatically in the course of just a decade and a half. Such rapid changes without some kind of check, some kind of thoughtful evaluation of their consequences, cannot be good. In the last five or so years the entrepreneurial invention of web 2.0 (I am sure we’re on 3.0 by now) has dramatically increased the process of technological change. I apologize for using so many analogies, but just like Moore’s law of processing speed, the presence of these technologies in our daily lives has increased exponentially.
Ryan asks if this original post was a polemic. I confess I did not have that word in mind when I wrote the post, but in retrospect it seems apt. I wrote it the way I did precisely because I wanted people to take notice and maybe take at least a temporarily skeptical view of their own practices because I think the use of technology, and especially web and media technologies in our classrooms and out of them is something that we should be incredibly skeptical of for several reasons. One: we should be concerned about how these technologies interfere with actual learning even as they promise to make learning easier. Two: we should be concerned about the cognitive impact of these technologies on the critical thinking skills and the moral and social intelligence of our students. Three: we should be especially concerned with the degree to which all of these technologies, whether they are corporately-owned or university-controlled, indoctrinate our students into patterns of thinking that are explicitly consumerist and possibly worse, conformist.
I can’t go into all of these in this particular response, but I will try to touch upon the first idea (how these technologies potentially interfere with learning) as best as I can in the hope that Luke will allow me to post again on the other two issues.
Let me make clear first that I think of myself as a pretty technologically literate person (I helped to create and continue to maintain the WordPress website for the newspaper that I edit (http://www.gcadvocate.com) and that I have used technology in my classes in the past, although with very mixed results. I did not intend to suggest that technology is not incredibly useful for research purposes or for creating word documents, or that tools like blackboard or even WordPress are not useful as a storage house for course documents and course readings. I even think there is room in many of our courses for a certain amount of online discussion if that is something that students want to do—in my experience, however, the quality of thinking and the amount of participation on blackboard discussion boards is abysmal, for reasons I will get to in later posts.
The issue for me is not whether or not technology can be used to benefit students in the classroom, but rather what is being lost in the process. Of course, any new technology can, and will inevitably make its way into our classrooms, and it will inevitably be used in both good and bad ways, but how and at what speed that change takes place is important. I also think that regardless of how much new technologies infiltrate the academy, there is value in creating intellectual spaces that are free of technology, even if only to provide some sense of contrast to our currently web-obsessed culture and to foster a certain self-reliance, which is lost in a world where knowledge is always immediately available to us.
To illustrate I will return to the idea of using YouTube videos in the class, since Ryan mentioned this specifically in his response to my original post. Ryan writes:
“When you offer up this example, it’s difficult to know what you actually mean by the showing of a YouTube video. I’m not sure how it is a distraction from language or the learning process. People all over the world are increasingly turning to video as a mode of self-expression, political critique, creative production, and personal daily communication.”
I agree with Ryan that indeed, there are lots of people who use video as a form of communication and I have no qualms with teaching video production in the university, indeed, I would encourage it. However I would argue that video, like many technologies is actually a poor form of communicating important complex ideas in the classroom for several reasons. In a science classroom it may very well be helpful to use video as a form of modeling complex biological or physical structures such as the reproductive organs of fruit flies or the atomic structure of chlorine, and the academy has been doing this for decades, but it is much less useful for explaining what a tautological argument is or helping us to understand the difference between, say connotative and denotative language or for discussing the differences between moral and ethical arguments. In other words it’s not really good for helping us teach students how to think or how to express themselves clearly. Sure, you could use a video (such as this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miz4FrzsNLc) that contains advertisements for Bombay Sapphire Gin and Jimmy Dean sausages) that (largely incorrectly) explains the difference between connotative and denotative language, but would it really be any more useful than just talking about it oneself and providing examples on a whiteboard?
But there must be several really wonderful videos out there that talk about important issues related to critical thinking or communication. For instance, what about this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc) that was recently posted to Cacophony on how to talk about race and racism. On the surface this seems like a good example of the kinds of videos that could be used in the classroom. Indeed, this video has apparently been hyped by many educators as a great tool for helping students learn rhetoric, but upon closer inspection, the actual intellectual content of the video is slim at best and can be boiled down to one or two sentences. Any good instructor could introduce these ideas just as clearly as “Jay Smooth” without all the jump editing and the background music and then spend the extra time providing their students with examples for discussion.
In other words, in most cases, especially in the kinds of core classes that deal with often abstract or critical thinking skills, like philosophy, composition, rhetoric, literature, logic, or mathematics, video is not a compliment to teaching but a substitute for it, and often it is a poor substitute. For this same reason, video is also a poor way of relating ideas to our own experiences. Yes one can have a discussion ABOUT a video, but one cannot have a discussion WITH a video, the way that one can have a discussion with one’s instructor or one’s peers. And one cannot craft a video to suit the purposes of a particular class (unless of course the instructor made the video themselves, in which case there is no need for YouTube.) My essential point here is that showing a video can be a poor, often time-consuming, sometimes time-wasting, substitute for real discussion and that it can be and often is, ineffectively used by those eager to implement technology into their classrooms.
On the surface this may not sound like much of a critique. I can hear people saying to themselves: “Okay fine, so just don’t use it in those particular instances; just use it when it works.” This seems perfectly reasonable and I really don’t have a problem with using technology when it works; however, the real problem is that this is not what happens and it is not what is happening today Instead, in part because of the promotion of, and excitement over technology use in the classroom, and the attendant sums of money that come along with promoting technology, what happens is that ideas which can easily be taught using computers or videos or PowerPoint are valued over those which cannot be taught with technology, or which simply do not need technology to be taught. The medium becomes the message and as we become increasingly enamored of using web technologies in the classroom, what can be taught with video and audio assistance, or what can be easily found online or what is interesting enough to hold students’ attention online (interesting enough I’ll add to keep them from switching over to Facebook or HULU or pornography or video games) or what is compatible with a social networking platform, is what will be taught. Teaching Shakespeare is a good example of how technology, by its very presence can potentially change the emphasis of a class.
For instance, when I teach Shakespeare I often spend several classes reading an entire play out loud with the students so that they can get the human to human experience of actually hearing the language in several voices, making choices about character motivation, emphasis, dynamics, etc. I could instead spend about two thirds of that time showing a feature length film adaptation of the play—which takes almost as long to watch as it does to read. Students would still get a sense of the language and they would still get a sense of character motivation, but it would be Hollywood’s version of Shakespeare instead of their own. The experience would be a passive one, like so many of the experiences that modern media and web technology provides, instead of the incredibly dynamic and active experience they get from reading the play themselves. Film adaptations of Shakespeare and other classics like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, are often used in literature classrooms as “technology.” The argument for their use is that these films allow students to relate to the work and that it helps them get a stronger understanding of the narrative elements of a particular play or novel as well as the emotional experiences that video editing makes possible. However, Wuthering Heights is not merely a collection of ideas and feelings, it is, at its very essence a collection of words and the sound of words is important, whether spoken out loud or heard inside one’s head. The use of technology obscures this fact and reinforces a simple and easy to digest Hollywood version of these texts that obliterates their linguistic content.
Much of the problem I see with technology use in the academy is precisely this: that at its best it is often unnecessary, while at its worst it can be a distraction from what is really important. More importantly an emphasis or over-emphasis upon technology use in the classroom inevitably changes the nature of course content, and not always in ways that we would otherwise be comfortable with. My students already know how to use YouTube and Facebook, but, in many cases, they have almost no idea what it’s like to speak in public with confidence, to express themselves to others without fear, or how to have a serious, collegial, and honest discussion with their fellow citizens, one that isn’t mediated and made safe by distance, excessive irony, or easy pop culture allusions. The importance of what Boone calls “Meatspace,” and learning to navigate that space should not be underestimated. Nor should the importance of diverse interpersonal communities.
But isn’t web technology, especially web 2.0 technology all about active and dynamic communities such as this blog? This is an important question and it gets to my second point main point, which is that although web technologies may mimic community, their impact on the social and moral sensibilities of our students is something to consider. If, as I advocate, we should create technology free spaces it is not only because we may learn better in those spaces, as I’ve tried to argue here, but because they provide our students with cognitive alternatives which are drastically shrinking in our increasingly monitor-centered lives. I will address in the next post if I can find the courage to put off my dissertation for yet another day.
To paraphrase something Neil Postman once wrote: What we need to know about computers is not how to use them but how they use us.
I think you’ve made just as broad an assumption (albeit the opposite one) about web technology in the classroom as the one you’re actually protesting against.
You warn against an “uncritical embrace of web technology” in education while advocating a complete removal of the same technology, without any discussion or critique of what does or doesn’t work for specific pedagogical goals, types of students, size of classroom, or any other variable. Saying that we shouldn’t use any web technology in class is really no different than saying we shouldn’t use books or lectures because of their inherent qualities.
Any teacher who uses any technology for the sake of using it (or doesn’t use it for the sake of not using it), without sound pedagogical objectives in mind, is doing a disservice to his/her students, regardless of the technology. Its fine not to use the Web, but don’t assume that we automatically create a better learning environment for our students by doing so. You want to create “congitive-alternatives” outside our “monitor-centered lives.” This is a very noble goal, and a useful one I think. Any class, however, with or without any technology, runs the risk of insulating itself, and not providing those cognitive-alternatives.
I think this piece of writing suffers from overgeneralization, not to mention sloppy sentence structure and inaccuracy:
“The use” is singular; the sentence should read “that the use of such technologies is a social good.” Also, the Dewey Decimal System hasn’t gone away at all; as its owner OCLC reports, it is “the world’s most widely used library classification system.”
Stripped of its digressions, this sentence reads: “I’d like to make the argument that … the creation and conservation of technology-free spaces … seems more and more important to me.” Well, you’ve convinced me: I am entirely persuaded that such a goal seems more and more important to you.
Don’t get me wrong: I often create contemplative tech-free zones for myself (yoga class! bookstore! long walk! beach day!), and I think it’s a great idea to create them in the classroom. But this essay isn’t convincing. Here’s better ammunition: the work of David Levy. He’s written excellent articles on this topic, but just to be mischievous I’m going to give you the link to the YouTube video of his talk at Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGcvj3JiGA
I do think it’s a great idea to use this blog as a platform for sharing your argument. After all, that’s the best way to do it, not only because your imagined audience is here, but because if you published this in print you’d probably never hear a peep of response. It reminds me of the book Clay Shirky mentions in Here Comes Everybody, the book named In Praise of Scribes, the printed book from 1494 about how publishing books by writing them out in longhand really gives you time to think, brings you closer to the material. Which, you have to admit, is true.
(There, I managed not to cite Plato.)
Amanda,
Your comments on my prose style are spot on. I should really have been more careful. I admit my argument is also pretty general, but in the space of a blog entry it’s not always easy to discuss specifics, although I have tried to do that in my response to Boone and Ryan. I am eager to read the Levy. Thanks.
Why do you presuppose such an acrimonious relationship between good teaching and use of technology in the classroom?