tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post5536475859181044351..comments2024-03-26T23:57:42.268-04:00Comments on SpeEdChange: The Tool Imperative or A MacGyver Complexirasocolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01412837280249622430noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-69186439785202637442010-10-04T17:14:40.715-04:002010-10-04T17:14:40.715-04:00Carolyn,
Thank you for adding to the conversation...Carolyn,<br /><br />Thank you for adding to the conversation. I agree with all except: "But I also know the finest teacher I have ever worked with, who was a master of Socratic inquiry, could have done it without much beyond the technology of a book or printed article, or just the tool of a pen, or even just the tool of oral communication."<br /><br />Maybe. Maybe he can communicate. But could all students, say, lying on the grass under the sun - much less lying on the grass in the rain, be taking it all in if he was just talking?<br /><br />The problem with Socrates, and the whole Socratic education concept, is how elitist it is. It was designed that way. Socrates was in no way interested in educating everyone. In fact, he thought education should be very difficult and hard to get. That was a part of his opposition to literacy. (The other part largely related to the undependability of non-spoken text, when you can't see and smell your "teacher.")<br /><br />But if you get past that, I really struggle with comprehending the idea of the book as some small, easy technology. The book - declared "the most significant technology of the last millennium" by readers of The Guardian, is a very expensive, very complex, and very disabling technology (2/3 of Americans never read above the 6th grade level). Just because a technology is old, doesn't make it any less a technology <a rel="nofollow">http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-is-technology.html</a> - one of the books behind my dissertation is William Alcott's 256 page guide explaining to the teachers of 1841 how to use the "Black Board." Alcott, of course, had already pushed American schools to build real structures, with good windows, good roofs, chairs, and desks. All controversial technological additions in their time, as was the introduction - by Henry Barnard - of the idea of the school schedule.<br /><br />It is "all technology" to me - unless humans are naturally endowed with it (see the question Darren raises above re: oral language). So once you are using technologies you are choosing technologies. And technology choices are usually about power.<br /><br />Socratic choices, or focusing on the book, are typically "comfort choices" for the teacher, not choices made for student access, or the needs of students. Remember, this year's kindergärtners will graduate into the world of 2023. That's not the 15th Century.<br /><br />- Ira Socolirasocolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01412837280249622430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-73947965324343726392010-10-04T16:57:39.117-04:002010-10-04T16:57:39.117-04:00Carolyn Foote has left a new comment on your post ...Carolyn Foote has left a new comment on your post "The Tool Imperative or A MacGyver Complex": but for unknown reasons, it is not appearing... so I've put it in myself - IS<br /><br />Well, first off, I assure you my nephew wasn't giggling over Nazi propaganda, to be sure. And I would posit that all sorts of bigoted behaviors have persisted throughout history but we have as a society been able to move past some of them, and I have a belief that we can become more aware. Maybe by inches and degrees and over much time, but we can evolve in our human understanding. (of course, that is only my philosophy).<br /><br />I get your point regarding technology as it is one I struggle with constantly, because I believe it is both true and not true.<br /><br />I suppose what I really meant(and still should have said more clearly) in my post was that the ability to think for oneself and to act out of mindfulness, compassion and deep consideration of ideas is important. Which you mention in your response to the original blog post and to Darren's comments.<br /><br />I think the ability to use the tools of our time is in many ways critically important.<br /><br />But I also know the finest teacher I have ever worked with, who was a master of Socratic inquiry, could have done it without much beyond the technology of a book or printed article, or just the tool of a pen, or even just the tool of oral communication. He was the most skilled teacher I've known because what he understood and knew about was curiosity, wondering, questioning and most of all listening and reflecting.<br /><br />Quoting Darren from your post above: "Show me a kid that's learned how to learn, one that can think, can process, and critically evaluate. Show me a kid that's learned how to analyze reality, with or without the use of technology...<br /><br />And I'll show you the kid that will master the tools of the future, simply because they invented them in the first place."<br /><br />Students who have the ability to evaluate and analyze, to think critically, and to think long term have the "tools" that will help them be adaptable--because their critical abilities are ones they will bring with them to the "technology table" so to speak. And they'll have those "tools" to bring to the analysis of anything they face/learn/encounter.<br /><br />On the other hand, I do think it's critical that we turn the paradigm of school on its ear. The new technologies do invite us to have our education conversation(by that I mean school) in a whole different way, that conceivably is more "life-long". It's not just the tools though--it's really that the things they allow are helping us to see things in a completely different light--to use the wisdom of crowds, to leap through "classroom walls", to elevate quiet voices to voices that get heard--there are so many transformative things that the tools allow us to do/see.<br /><br />So that is where my own cognitive dissonance on this question enters in.<br /><br />You have some very cogent points and I readily admit my own post had some weaknesses in logic which frankly I wrestled with, but I never meant to imply that it is only the technology that was at fault. When we tolerate bigotry in whatever form, we perpetuate it.<br /><br />And I think that is worth saying once in awhile.irasocolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01412837280249622430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-20893719135154753462010-10-04T16:40:47.735-04:002010-10-04T16:40:47.735-04:00Well, first off, I assure you my nephew wasn't...Well, first off, I assure you my nephew wasn't giggling over Nazi propaganda, to be sure. And I would posit that all sorts of bigoted behaviors have persisted throughout history but we have as a society been able to move past some of them, and I have a belief that we can become more aware. Maybe by inches and degrees and over much time, but we can evolve in our human understanding. (of course, that is only my philosophy).<br /><br />I get your point regarding technology as it is one I struggle with constantly, because I believe it is both true and not true. <br /><br />I suppose what I really meant(and still should have said more clearly) in my post was that the ability to think for oneself and to act out of mindfulness, compassion and deep consideration of ideas is important. Which you mention in your response to the original blog post and to Darren's comments.<br /><br />I think the ability to use the tools of our time is in many ways critically important.<br /><br />But I also know the finest teacher I have ever worked with, who was a master of Socratic inquiry, could have done it without much beyond the technology of a book or printed article, or just the tool of a pen, or even just the tool of oral communication. He was the most skilled teacher I've known because what he understood and knew about was curiosity, wondering, questioning and most of all listening and reflecting.<br /><br />Quoting Darren from your post above: "Show me a kid that's learned how to learn, one that can think, can process, and critically evaluate. Show me a kid that's learned how to analyze reality, with or without the use of technology...<br /><br />And I'll show you the kid that will master the tools of the future, simply because they invented them in the first place."<br /><br />Students who have the ability to evaluate and analyze, to think critically, and to think long term have the "tools" that will help them be adaptable--because their critical abilities are ones they will bring with them to the "technology table" so to speak. And they'll have those "tools" to bring to the analysis of anything they face/learn/encounter. <br /><br />On the other hand, I do think it's critical that we turn the paradigm of school on its ear. The new technologies do invite us to have our education conversation(by that I mean school) in a whole different way, that conceivably is more "life-long". It's not just the tools though--it's really that the things they allow are helping us to see things in a completely different light--to use the wisdom of crowds, to leap through "classroom walls", to elevate quiet voices to voices that get heard--there are so many transformative things that the tools allow us to do/see.<br /><br />So that is where my own cognitive dissonance on this question enters in.<br /><br />You have some very cogent points and I readily admit my own post had some weaknesses in logic which frankly I wrestled with, but I never meant to imply that it is only the technology that was at fault. When we tolerate bigotry in whatever form, we perpetuate it. <br /><br />And I think that is worth saying once in awhile.Carolyn Footehttp://www.futura.edublogs.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-68414971750433515352010-10-04T14:47:48.433-04:002010-10-04T14:47:48.433-04:00Darren,
Thanks for responding...
I don't rea...Darren,<br /><br />Thanks for responding...<br /><br />I don't really want to get too deep into the Tomasello/Chomsky debate. I come to language as a technology or tool via Ground Theory observation. That is, the "fact" of language may be innate but the reality of its use is as a learned tool. We sure treat it as a "learned tool" in schools - constantly teaching the specific rules of its usage - and often limiting the choices of languages used.<br /><br />But, while my last paragraph might suggest no need to respond to your point number 2, I'd rather discuss the extreme limitations. You may not be wrong, of course. Socrates agreed with you absolutely, and thus deeply opposed literacy as a destructive technology. But face-to-face as a learning tool without any technologies is not just limited re: time and distance from the source of information, it is also limited severely by the junction of the speaker's verbal explanatory skills and the listener's auditory learning skills. Why, I imagine, even little kids resort to drawing in the dirt when explaining football plays.<br /><br />As for #3, thank you for the links, those help explain your thinking to me. First though, I think I need to say again that my point was not that schools not need teach anything else, but that "without the technologies which enable communication and information access, education is simply impossible." And if I look at your list, "civic literacy, moral uprightness, integrity, respect, and the importance of maintaining high levels of social capital," I might say that civic literacy and maintenance of social capital clearly require the constant use of information and communication technologies, and that if moral uprightness (a term I struggle with, especially in the American experience, but...), integrity, and respect, mean very little these days if they are restricted to face-to-face communicative environments. I know that I insist on my undergraduate teacher education students having signed public blogs for reasons which closely parallel your list.<br /><br />But there is a sense which troubles me in Foote's piece. And that's her assumed ranking of technologies on a morality scale. The printed book (etc) has been enormously destructive during its history, and I'm not just repeating the fact that Gutenberg wiped out close to half the languages of Europe. Whether Mein Kampf or the works of many right-wing authors today, or the exploitive destruction of lives in pseudo-memoirs, or the use of print "journalism" by the likes of Henry Ford, we know that what Foote is discussing has nothing to do with "the internet." That giggling child may have been reading Nazi childhood propaganda about Jews while in bed in Hamburg in 1938, and the "outing" of Gays for destructive sport goes way back before Arpanet.<br /><br />My friend Michael Bugeja of Iowa State's journalism school once called Gutenberg "the junk mail king of the 15th Century," when we debated (he being on the "anti" side in a battle about social networking in schools). He is right, of course. Most of what Gutenberg printed with his invention were the indulgences of the wealthy. And soon after, his invention filled France with pulp journalism about the "Martin Guerre Case." It was a tool of brutal repression of minorities in the hands of the English crown, just as radio and film were in the hands of Soviet dictators.<br /><br />Yet none of that is the fault of print. Rather it is the fault of humans who have not learned to use technologies in responsible and humane ways.<br /><br />- Ira Socolirasocolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01412837280249622430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-43273328618535773232010-10-04T14:20:53.970-04:002010-10-04T14:20:53.970-04:00Hello Ira, I appreciate you thinking through this ...Hello Ira, I appreciate you thinking through this further. A few thoughts:<br /><br />1. I don't subscribe to the idea that language is a technology. I know some linguists might (Michael Tomasello, for example), but others maintain that language is innate (Chomsky, Pinker, Sampson).<br /><br />2. In light of the fact that I don't think language is a technology, I can confidently argue that teaching can effectively take place without technology. Furthermore, I don't believe the statement that "technology is what allows us to socialize learning," is entirely true. Technology *can* aid in socializing learning, but learning can be social without any technology at all (haven't you ever sat in a face-to-face idea exchange?).<br /><br />3. Finally, I don't think that the only purpose of schooling is to teach kids to learn. Carolyn Foote has recently expounded upon other purposes (http://futura.edublogs.org/2010/09/30/more-than-a-test-score/) and I've written a little about this concept here (http://darrendraper.posterous.com/what-might-the-future-bring).Darren Draperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17578208859042859340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-46028332903596932502010-10-04T14:18:17.073-04:002010-10-04T14:18:17.073-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Darren Draperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17578208859042859340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19457872.post-10222479015066816162010-10-03T14:05:40.831-04:002010-10-03T14:05:40.831-04:00Tool imperative? MacGuyver complex?
Not sure I se...Tool imperative? MacGuyver complex?<br /><br />Not sure I see a difference. If you need to escape from the room with the ticking timebomb in it, you'll use the 19th century teaching technology, or the smart phone, whichever is at hand.<br /><br />I think the real problem educators should be looking at is not whether to teach with cell phones or chalkboards, but instead giving students the rhetorical and philosophical tools to understand who you need to go beat up (or vote out) for putting the bomb in your room in the first place.<br /><br />That is the problem with this 'colonialist' critique of modern education, isn't it? Do too good a job and the students will figure out a solution for themselves.<br /><br />-htbAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com