Martin Owen (t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk)
Wed, 2 Dec 1998 18:53:17 +0000
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 18:53:17 +0000 From: Martin Owen <t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk> Subject: Re: [ifets] Teachers and Technology Refusal and cabbages and kings
I am grateful for Carol's prose...
however I am reminded of Blake's Schoolboy :
"But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay."
or Henry Read's "Easing of the Spring" .
http://calvin.cse.psu.edu/~gargi/poems/NamingOfParts.html
... it tells us a lot about education.
Yes Chris schools are concrete.... it just shows you what can happen if you
reify the concept schooling!
An apparent technological determinist's tale ( based on an expample of Yrji
Engestrom)
I am a forgetful soul, I have on more than one ocassion left hotels with my
room key in the pocket. No doubt this has meant that there would need to be
duplicates in the manger's office (securely kept, to guard guests'
privacy), and there would be a good trade for the local locksmith. However
I do break those house rules.
In some hotels, I have noticed that they have added mighty weights that
strongly discourage carrying the key about with you (it does disrupt the
line of one's Armani suit). I leave such keys at reception. This obliges
the division of labour around the hotel to change. There is also less work
for locksmiths, however there does need to be a receptionist around at the
times when guests are likely to come and go.
Lately I have been given programmed pieces of plastic with a magnetic
strip. Such things are of less cost to the hotel, they do not mind losing
so many of them, and they can be reprogrammed ensuring their future guests'
security. The people at reception can now do other work (rehearsing "have
a nice day"), and presumably the locksmith is retraining as an electronic
engineer.
Simple technological changes which in turn change my behaviour, change the
division of labour within a hotel and change the system of rules and
regulations of hotel life.
I argue that this is not technological determinism. It is a recognition
that action of subjects on objects change the subject as well as the
object. The social context changes because of the tools and other factor in
the environment about us. The computer genie is out of the box. Old
technology, new technology... it is a factor in the environment.
Martin Owen
T.M.Owen@bangor.ac.uk
Director, Project REM
School of Education Yr Ysgol Addysg
University of Wales, Bangor Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor
Normal Site Safle'r Normal
Holyhead Rd Ffordd Caergybi
Bangor Bangor
Gwynedd
LL57 2PX
Voice/Llais +44 1248 382 943
Fax/Ffacs +44 1248 38 36 40
URL: http://weblife.bangor.ac.uk/rem/rem.html
REM is a EC DGXIII Telematics Education and Training Project
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"Technology is nothing more or less than a natural phase of the creative
process which engaged man from the moment he forged his first tool and
began to transform the world for its humanization"
Paulo Freire : Cultural Action for Freedom
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