Subject: Re: toward a complete learning environment
From: tom abeles (tabeles@tmn.com)
Date: Mon 03 Apr 2000 - 16:47:31 MEST
Date: Mon, 03 Apr 2000 09:47:31 -0500 From: tom abeles <tabeles@tmn.com> 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.
Ania's response to Betz's comments are well taken (I will not address them here).
David Rothenberg has written a small volume called "Hand's End" where he address
this issue by essentially pointing out that technology is an extension of humans
in all senses of the word.
Technology can not be set apart from humans in the traditional, reductionist,
model of analysis. It is no more value neutral than the creator of the technology
and all those who develop and carry the idea forward. Nowhere is this more clearly
illustrated than in educational software. As an example, we could look at all the
asynchronous web based systems now in the market. Each has an underlying design
philosophy, visions of who is coming to the table, what is to be learned, how it
is to be measured, levels of trust, rolls of the various parties and many other
factors, explicit and implicit.
The fact that we are using a listserv which is push technology versus a web
conference system which is pull and the exclusion or inclusion of other support
are reflected not just in the choices of the users of the system but also the
designers of the system
Even more important, though, is the philosophical issue, including ethics. The
instructional technologists would like to believe that their creations are value
neutral, an issue hotly debated in The Academy as faculty come to grips, not only
with virtuality but changes on campus brought about by the virtual world. These
concerns can not be dismissed by slapping a label of "luddite" on one segment of
Academia and indicating that the issues do not lie, at least, in part, with the
visible manifestation of human interaction, technology.
Ania has written, with passion and conviction, on the issue of creativity in
education. The current interest in "multiple intelligences" is another aspect of
this arena. There are serious educational philosophers who believe that some of
these categories may be more critical than the basic IQ or the measure of
student's mastery of traditional educational materials.
What this might mean with regards to the types and uses of technology remain to be
seen. After all, a wireless brain implant could make the entire K-16 system as a
technology, obsolete. As they say on Star Trek, "we are the Borg, we will
assimilate you, resistance is futile." Bruce Sterling has a similar idea in his
short story, The Swarm, wherein he suggests that individuals are inefficient when
compared to the collective mind. Stephenson's Snow Crash and other cyberpunk
writers have echoed these ideas.
The technology is not just hardware or software and it is far from being value
neutral. Technologists can not just postulate this and absolve themselves of the
larger issues. It is time that the engineering schools again required their
students to take courses in the humanities and social sciences within the liberal
studies programs and not just receive a cursory exposure within the walls of the
engineering schools.
thoughts?
tom abeles
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