To all of you who commented on my thoughts, thank-you.
While I do sometimes feel like a prophet for a "brave new world", I feel I should share an experience from the 1980s.
During those years, I managed an independent bookstore. I bought from publishers' reps the titles I thought would sell in our Lakes Region area of NH - and when personal computer titles started cropping up, I honestly believed they would be a phase. Don't ask me why...except that the programmers from Hewlett Packard who came in to look at the list I had to offer, purchased books that didn't even look like they were printed in English.
It didn't take long for me to realize how wrong I had been. It occurred to me that if I didn't learn about this new way of communicating, I would be left behind. The decision to learn all I could about personal computing, and then web design altered the course of my career.
While I am old enough to remember life with typewriters and carbon copies (not to mention mimeograph machines), I wouldn't go back to that time anymore than I would to the days before Edison or Bell. We are living through a momentous time, and our challenge is to take advantage of the best it has to offer. Education is now available to people on a wider scale than ever before.
I agree that socialization is incredibly important, and that people should not spend hours upon hours before a computer monitor without an equal amount of time spent enjoying family, friends, and colleagues. That concept is the same as the one that says you should go out to enjoy life, and not simply read about it, or watch others do it on televison - hi-def, holographic, or otherwise.
Online learning is proving to be a valuable asset to independent learners. Some courses lend themselves beautifully to this environment, but others do not. Cursive writing (AKA the Palmer method, which I learned in elementary school) is one of those arts that can only be mastered with practice. One of our most respected professors told me he would never offer his "Myth of the Hero" as an online course, because the spontaneaous interaction of students would be lost online.
Children need to be with other children, and with adults who can serve as roll models. The special, intuitive, unspoken language of personal interaction cannot be recreated by a computer - that's certainly true. But - our children are learning to use computers as soon as they can sit up. Unlike us, they have no resistance to learning this way, and technology will continue to change more and more rapidly. If we want to pass on our message, we need to speak their language.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Terry,
Your post took me back. I was cleaning out some of my old high school stuff that I've kept for far too many years, and I found old carbon copy tests, and I still have some typewriters. I do not know how I ever made out tests with carbon copies or typed papers back then. Also, I found it interesting you mentiond cursive writing. I mentioned that on the discussion board before I read this post. It's another sign of the times. And you are correct that we must adapt to the students. I mentioned that in my blog. It is our responsibility as educators to find a way to connect to them and not the other way around. And they are very much wed to technology, and are very visual. Its amazing how few kids really read today. I also agree that socialization is very much a part of the educational process. Evolving technology allows us to connect as never before, but it is still now the same as being f2f. For that reason, while I'm very enthusiastic about the possbilities of online education, I still have reservations about offering it to young children as some states are beginning to do. A way must be found to include that f2f interaction in some form.
Post a Comment