In the reading Of Luddites, Learning and Life I did not find Neil Postman to be anti-technology based so much as anti-change for change sake.
About ten years ago I worked for a Aerospace company. New management came in and ushered in a new way to approach employee -manager relations and increase efficiency and productivity in one neat innovative package. Kaizen was the way to bring our UAW employees and management together as a team. You can Google Kaizen for details. It is a very task oriented management method designed to give one in the process absolute power as a team to streamline a process to it's ultimate efficiency. Then a new group of employees are chosen and they evaluate either the same issue of another issue of their choosing and improve upon that goal. Each team has absolute power to change what they see fit. After a few Kaizens the unofficial motto of the participants became he who Kaizens last wins. The ultimate goal was lost on the masses. Many times it was change for change sake. This is brought to light by Neil Postmans example of his attempt to purchase a Honda Accord which only came equipped with cruise control and power windows.
Five years ago I was privileged to be hired to begin a program that would allow secondary students a chance to recover credits through an online classroom program. This was an inner-city program designed for "at risk youth". The students came to me after having failed a specific subject (or two or three) and through the magic of the computer were allowed to redeem themselves in order to obtain their high school diploma.
When I was asked by friends and colleagues what my latest venture was and I explained, their comment was almost always the same. Well that should be easy for the students since kids these days know all about computers and are on them all the time. This statement I found to be a logical fallacy. The students that I worked with did not have access to computers either at school or home and the limited exposure that they did have was in emailing. LOL
I found the statement by Chalres Reigeluth that technology has had minimal impact on K-12 education very insightful and not at all main stream. It seems to be a little know fact that many of our K-12 students are virtually computer illiterate. Technology is making its headway's but it does have far to go.
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We all have the same amount of hours in a day. It's what we do with them that sets us apart.
2 comments:
I found your comment about the secondary students being able to make up credits with on line courses, very interesting. It kinda reminded me of the girls in my day that became pregnant and had to finish school in a separate school program and graduate with a GED, not a diploma. Then when you said others commented it should be easy for them, because they are on computers all the time. Wow! What a reality check--they certinly aren't living in the world I know--if they don't have access in school many don't have them at home. I'm stuck right now, as my internet has been down since the last big storms (2 weeks) and they came out Saturday to fix it, but need a part--a splitter they said and I had to reschedule to have them come back with the part to fix it. So, my internet at home is down until they return Saturday to fix it. Finding time in labs is a challenge as they close at 5 now and by the time I get home take care of my dad, it's too late to go to the library. I can't imagine how those students were able to handle completing classes, not to mention the time it takes to learn how to do everything on the computer.
Margie Springer
Thanks for the post. It is good to have someone confirm that all the world is not so easily wired. We were able to provide a place and the technology so students could accomplish their goals of HS graduation. But the most important piece of the puzzle was still the human interaction and tutoring they recieved when trying to understand the material. Glad your up and runnnig now. I hope for no really bad power out storms until we finish this class.
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