Subject: Re: toward a complete learning environment
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Mon 03 Apr 2000 - 12:43:25 MEST
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 20:43:25 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: toward a complete learning environment
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On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Muhammad Betz wrote:
> These two statements by Ania and tom are important to this discussion, but I
> think that tom has one notion backwards. It is because technology is value
> neutral, that it (i.e., technology) offers a sense of openness that is both
> absent in non-technological, educational settings.
The notion of technology being value-free or not is an interesting one. If
we agree that a sense of completeness of the learning environment comes
from its potential to integrate the pedagogic dimension of learning with
the means thought to make these pedagogic objective possible, then we may
want to ask whether technology itself manages to faciliate such a bridge
without us having to wonder about it. Having said this, let us consider
the point of the role of technology further:
If, as Muhammad suggests above, it is technology that makes s true sense
of openness possible, we may wish to ask the following:
If the "curriculum pertaining to this type of learning and these
types of projects is not predetermined by the limits of technology based
information", then quite possibly the difference between library and
computers is solely technological and not pedagogical. To follow through
with this arguments, one may suggest that therefore without computers, a
sense of openness that we have in mind was more a matter of pedagogy than
technology. Technology therefore serves pedagogy rather than liberates it,
so it seems so far. If this is the case, then we are back at the starting
point which assumed that technology does nothing different for pedagogy
other than serves as a tool for reinforcing the beliefs that were
propoagated by the means of old technologies like books, videos, tapes or
conversations (a la dialogues with your mentor).
> The power I see in technology for learning derives from its use to
> create projects based upon personal interests and motivations.
I would agree with this point. But we still are left with the folowing
problem: how do we enable the personal interest to arise in ways that do
not reduce personal interests to an "acceptable interest" i.e. the kinds
of things that teachers not only like to see but make possible for
learners to see? In other words, how can we create conditions that
result in a surprise, a genuine one, rather than patronising conditions
where our students play games that they are allowed to play by virtue of
the limits that our curricula (and not technology) impose on the
potential that our technology-based environments make possible?
> An example: I have recently offered an instructional module to undergradute
> students in a teacher education program related to the use of building web
> sites with FrontPage 2000.
How did your students think that, with the help of technology, they could
make their future students creative, subverissive, make critically
informed decisions?
Ania Lian
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