Martin Owen (t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk)
Tue, 24 Nov 1998 20:44:43 +0000
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 20:44:43 +0000 From: Martin Owen <t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk> Subject: [ifets] Re: "New" vs "old" technologies
<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><bigger><bigger>It is a pity that the
title of the debate is dichotomised in that there us a presumption that
there is a break point at some point which we can easily define. In the
history of the application of technologies for learning I believe that
there have been a number of mistaken (IMHO) attempts to taxonomise and
delineate roles for specific educational media and giving media some
specific "learning" attributes. Such descriptors can be found in the
work of Heidt, Romizowski, and Gagné. They have some validity at a
gross level, and clearly if you want to show action then a moving image
has clear advantages, however such a taxonomy hardly constitutes the
title "theory". If we do have anything to learn from earlier learning
technologists like Romiszowski, it is probably the simple message that
modalities do matter. Text on a web page is still text.
It is perhaps more important to develop a more integrated model of
learning as a social and distributed activity in which tools and
technology are within the Vygotskyian notion of a mediation/action
system.
Latour analyses how skills and competencies and are distributed among
people and artefacts and rejects a simple asymmetric relationship
between humans and non-humans: "We have been able to delegate to
non-humans not only force as we have known it for centuries but also
values, duties and ethics" (Latour 1992). This is clear when we
understand that the tools, signs, and symbols created are products of
their own histories and these are histories of social action. Below
this concept will be used to discuss the nature of software for
education. Latour's thinking clearly goes further than dialectical
materialism and the philosophy of Hegel, however there is a clear
lineage from the Marxian concept of dead labour or more rightly
objectified labour. That previous labour can be substituted for current
actual labour. This historic understanding of the products of social
activity therefore is integral to artefacts (such as educational
technologies) as well as humans. An artefact carries within it a social
history, but the artefact by its very existence has created a social
history. This is as true for the written text as it is for the
intelligent tutorial system.
Therefore to talk of old and new learning technologies avoids
addressing the social activity in which we situate our learning. The
teacher uses various tools to mediate their actions, as does the
learner. If there is a difference it is that modern technologies - in
the form of the machines themselves, as opposed to the systems in which
they are set- have an even greater tendency to incorporate objectified
labour. In essence, that is their difference.
It is much easier in modern technologies to incorporate layers of
management and control that were ever capable in older formulations. Is
this a good thing?
Paradoxically by allowing learners more "autonomy" in choosing the
source and timing of their (formal) learning, the technology itself
often imposes much greater intrinsic control thereby undermining the
real scope for individuality in their learning.
I realise this need not be so. It is possible to conceive of, and
create a modern tool-set that allows the learner more scope for
self-management and social collaborative endeavour.
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Martin Owen
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+44 1248 714688
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Ysgol Addysg School of Education
Coleg Prifysgol Cymru , Bangor University of Wales, Bangor
Bangor
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LL 57
+44 1248 382943
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