Educational technologies frustrate me, but I don't think it's their fault. In my view, the blame lies on the people, whether administrators or instructors, who make decisions about what technologies are used and how they're used. While the CIO wants support (something that costs money), the faculty want cutting edge (something that fulfills some prediction from Foucault or Derrida, preferably), and the student loses. My frustration has kept me from embracing educational technology,
whether it be content management systems, distance learning, or Second
Life.
At the same time, I've found the mainstream discussions of educational technology to be disappointing. Discussions of iPods in the classroom, whether the Macbook Air will revolutionize student work, or which flavor of LInux to use seem inane to me when there is limited adoption and development of real educational technologies like Alice and Storytelling Alice.
To be clear, I'm not talking about access issues here. I'm talking about learning styles and the time we're living in. One of the things that has stuck with me from Jay David Bolter's book Writing Space, which I just realized is 17 years old, is how he contextualizes our time as "the late age of print," an apt phrase for the chasm we're living in, stuck between the old and the new. For me, it seems like this idea explains the failures of educational technologies, since most people want to have it all.
Although I do sound like a luddite, I'm not. My frustration stems, in part, from the glaring fact that these technologies are not up to the challenges of the late age of print, no matter how much we force them (whether to make more money or to have something to publish). They just aren't there yet (a theme that I can't seem to leave behind), and, until they are, forcing them into the classroom only hurts students.
At the same time, I've found the mainstream discussions of educational technology to be disappointing. Discussions of iPods in the classroom, whether the Macbook Air will revolutionize student work, or which flavor of LInux to use seem inane to me when there is limited adoption and development of real educational technologies like Alice and Storytelling Alice.
To be clear, I'm not talking about access issues here. I'm talking about learning styles and the time we're living in. One of the things that has stuck with me from Jay David Bolter's book Writing Space, which I just realized is 17 years old, is how he contextualizes our time as "the late age of print," an apt phrase for the chasm we're living in, stuck between the old and the new. For me, it seems like this idea explains the failures of educational technologies, since most people want to have it all.
Although I do sound like a luddite, I'm not. My frustration stems, in part, from the glaring fact that these technologies are not up to the challenges of the late age of print, no matter how much we force them (whether to make more money or to have something to publish). They just aren't there yet (a theme that I can't seem to leave behind), and, until they are, forcing them into the classroom only hurts students.
