Thursday, October 28, 2010
The tyranny of technology
While these are some thoughts I had a while ago (and as usual never got around to posting) they still hold true today with all the discussion around changes in behaviour and brains brought on by technology use. See Rewiring Young Brains, Small, G. W., & Vorgon, G. (2008). iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind New York: HarperCollins & Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember. London: Atlantic Books.
There seems to be a bit of a backlash against the tyranny of technologies at the moment, in particular the way in which we are enslaved by email and in enthral to our always on mobile phones. A little while ago we had discussions on Woman's Hour in which Lowri Turner sounded like she was on speed as she defended her technology use and need to be permanently connected (and, insidiously, able to surveil her children at all times). Then there was an article in the Observer Magazine asking could you live a week without technology (it meant ICT i.e. mobiles, laptops etc). The take away line from this was: "iphones "Are those the things I see men stroking like little pets on the tube?" The main point was about the sterile nature of our electronic (vs aural or face-to-face) conversations and the pointlessness of many of the emails we receive these days (socially and for work) - go on just think about how much time it takes to compose a mail and how much quicker and more effective a walk down the corridor, across the office or a call on the phone is at sorting things out. So all of this culminated in me doing my own experiment one Monday morning back in April and refusing to open email until I had done the things I had set myself to complete from Friday; of course you get into trouble when you need your calendar, but I lasted until 1.30pm and got quite a few things finished off. Email is such a palpitation inducing, white rabbit hole of 'answer me now' urgency it's a wonder we ever accomplish anything. This practice lasted until Friday which was a pig of a day (maybe because I'd tried to be so in control the rest of the week!?!).
Another side to the argument is the use of new technologies in education. A recent article by a friend working in Australia debunks the myth that there is a great difference between so called digital natives and digital immigrants in their technology use (see Waycott, J., Bennett, S., Kennedy, G., Dalgarno, B., & Gray, K. Digital divides? Student and staff perceptions of information and communication technologies. Computers & Education, 54(4), 1202-1211). This is something Prensky himself had already started to review, beginning to write about digital wisdom: knowing what is important (i.e. evaluating use, information literacy, etc) & digital enhancement. It is also akin to what I had been thinking about in my piece on the tyranny of technology for the ISATT conference at the University of Lapland last year and issues highlighted by colleagues at ISSoTL 2009 at the University of Indiana, in Bloomington: I was arguing that the overwhelming emphasis on technology to the exclusion of the relationships we have with our students and the value we as teachers add was having a detrimental effect on education which was increasingly seen as something that could be packaged up and sold off and Norm Vaughan said in his experience students wanted less technology in the classroom and were frustrated by those tapping away at their keyboards. It takes me back once again to what people like Shirley Alexander and Greg Kearsley were saying at the beginning of the Web explosion, namely: purposeful and appropriate use vs blanket application and it's about the pedagogy stupid! So consider why and how and what for.
See also:
Alexander, S. (1995). Teaching and Learning on the World Wide Web. last updated 5 November, 1996.
Kearsley, G. (1998). Educational Technology: A Critique. Educational Technology, 38(2), 47-51. ¶ 5:31 pm
There seems to be a bit of a backlash against the tyranny of technologies at the moment, in particular the way in which we are enslaved by email and in enthral to our always on mobile phones. A little while ago we had discussions on Woman's Hour in which Lowri Turner sounded like she was on speed as she defended her technology use and need to be permanently connected (and, insidiously, able to surveil her children at all times). Then there was an article in the Observer Magazine asking could you live a week without technology (it meant ICT i.e. mobiles, laptops etc). The take away line from this was: "iphones "Are those the things I see men stroking like little pets on the tube?" The main point was about the sterile nature of our electronic (vs aural or face-to-face) conversations and the pointlessness of many of the emails we receive these days (socially and for work) - go on just think about how much time it takes to compose a mail and how much quicker and more effective a walk down the corridor, across the office or a call on the phone is at sorting things out. So all of this culminated in me doing my own experiment one Monday morning back in April and refusing to open email until I had done the things I had set myself to complete from Friday; of course you get into trouble when you need your calendar, but I lasted until 1.30pm and got quite a few things finished off. Email is such a palpitation inducing, white rabbit hole of 'answer me now' urgency it's a wonder we ever accomplish anything. This practice lasted until Friday which was a pig of a day (maybe because I'd tried to be so in control the rest of the week!?!).
Another side to the argument is the use of new technologies in education. A recent article by a friend working in Australia debunks the myth that there is a great difference between so called digital natives and digital immigrants in their technology use (see Waycott, J., Bennett, S., Kennedy, G., Dalgarno, B., & Gray, K. Digital divides? Student and staff perceptions of information and communication technologies. Computers & Education, 54(4), 1202-1211). This is something Prensky himself had already started to review, beginning to write about digital wisdom: knowing what is important (i.e. evaluating use, information literacy, etc) & digital enhancement. It is also akin to what I had been thinking about in my piece on the tyranny of technology for the ISATT conference at the University of Lapland last year and issues highlighted by colleagues at ISSoTL 2009 at the University of Indiana, in Bloomington: I was arguing that the overwhelming emphasis on technology to the exclusion of the relationships we have with our students and the value we as teachers add was having a detrimental effect on education which was increasingly seen as something that could be packaged up and sold off and Norm Vaughan said in his experience students wanted less technology in the classroom and were frustrated by those tapping away at their keyboards. It takes me back once again to what people like Shirley Alexander and Greg Kearsley were saying at the beginning of the Web explosion, namely: purposeful and appropriate use vs blanket application and it's about the pedagogy stupid! So consider why and how and what for.
See also:
Alexander, S. (1995). Teaching and Learning on the World Wide Web. last updated 5 November, 1996.
Kearsley, G. (1998). Educational Technology: A Critique. Educational Technology, 38(2), 47-51. ¶ 5:31 pm
