First of all I am going to apologize ahead of time for rambling on, I seem to do that alot, and I've been a little confused with the reading so when I'm writing down my thoughts they often just do not make sense! Oh well, here goes nothing ........
After reading the chapters and listening to Dr. Lowell's podcasts, I am trying to wrap my mind around that it seems everything around is can be considered technology. I always think of technology as computers, video phones, or really those items that can connect us to others. I've never thought of the classroom as technology and definately not speech or writing. However, as I previously said I thought of technology as items that connect us to others and isn't that what speech and writing does? connect us to others? So I am starting to expand my ideas on technology. Postman also speaks of the good and bad of technology and I have always thought that everything about technology wasn't as wonderful as they made it out to be. I think of our loss of privacy in using computers and connecting to the WWW. How many times have I been hacked into in Facebook, or the tonz of spam eamils trying to elicite my personnel information, and let's face it, you know the government can follow everything we do on here - they might even be reading this post LOL! Yes, I do sound a little paranoid! There is a flipside to every coin, and so it is with technology. Look at history - as factories become more streamlined with technology people lost their jobs, guns not only help feed the pioneers, but killed many of them as well.
I am having a time pushing myself through these first few chapters, and I hope the rest will not be so hard to grasp, I just think he is a negative writer. On page 11 at the top of the page he talks about teaching children how to use computers, but not teaching what is really important and if I am to understand this correctly he is calling teachers losers for this. I think that kids do need to know how to use the computer because that is what this world is moving towards and everything will be accessed through some type of technology. So are we losers? I don't think so we are trying to get them ready for society in the future. Yes, there are the basic reading, writing, and arithmatic that they need to know, but let's face it, if they can't opperate a computer they will usless in the future society. Well, my rambling is done for today - I'm going to go and try to figure Mr. Postman out a little bit more :0)
Postman doesn't support his assertion that teachers engage in teaching computerized systems. There's not data, no reference to any classroom where that activity happened. Remember this was written around 1990, published in '93. The first web browser was developed in '92. What "computerized system" were kids being taught? The big "connect the schools" movement didn't really kick in until the late 90s. So, what's he talking about?
ReplyDeleteHe also doesn't say what that alternate--more important--learning might be. Personally, my recollections of grade school in the 60s was that the most important things I learned happened on the playground.
Personally, I'm not sure that school grades are very helpful in the "real world." Their consistency carries, and GPAs are now inflated. A 4.0 does not seem to be good enough since there are classes with 4-6 points. The numbers go up, but does the education? I agree that the lessons on the playground hold much more meaning than the ones in the classroom. I can't tell you anything about my third grade class, but I sure remember the guilt I felt when I lied to a teacher (And the punishment when I got caught and grounded). While technology may engage students, their most important lessons are still learned outside of smartboards and computers.
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