Making Connections

It is reaching the time of the end of my participation in the MET program. During this journey I have learned enormously about Education and Technology… not only about these fields but also about the cultural transformations that we are experiencing due to the emergence and development of new technologies.

In this course, thinking on the several readings and discussions we held, I have particularly learned about text as a changing technology that has been experiencing and will continue experiencing remediation. An idea that keeps in my mind after analyzing some of the course readings (e.g., New London Group, Bolter, Ong), connecting them with previous knowledge, and the statements of other authors (such as Sir Ken Robinson, Marc Prensky, and Michael Wesch), is that we are facing a period of cultural and technological transformations. Within these changes, one of the things that we must address as educators is reconsidering and rethinking the way in which we educate and the whole education system, in order to engage our students with learning and to promote creativity and critical thinking skills. These skills are beginning to be required in the workplace, and will increasingly take place in these spaces.

Our students are developing new literacies, forms of communication, ways of thinking and understanding the world. They are in touch with new technologies, they search for and share information through them, and they use them to communicate with others.

If we do not address the need to rethink our culture and, particularly, our education system, we will be updated. As Postman (1993) has mentioned, every technology has positive and negative effects. The challenge for educators today is assessing the benefits of a wide number (that will increasingly grow) of technologies that can be used for educational purposes, and to integrate them effectively in instruction. Text technologies are changing (today faster than ever), our challenge is huge, but not because of this less thrilling.

I have mixed feelings about finishing this course and the MET program. I am glad for the work I have done, my effort to succeed, for having the chance of collaborating with and learning from amazing educators around the world, and for having the chance to perfect myself in order to be a better educator for my students. But I also will miss the chance to collaborate and learn from others, to build projects, know wonderful people, be updated on technologies and theoretical underpinnings behind Educational Technology. I guess that my natural desire to learn new Technologies and learn from the educational theories that promote its use will be stronger and will continue to update me on the field. In the future, hopefully soon, I wish to continue my graduate studies.

I would like to thank the instructors for their excellent job in promoting learning within the community of ETEC 540. Thanks to all my classmates, because all the concepts and ideas that we have shared and build in this course, has provided a huge learning opportunity and a rewarding learning experience.

Angela.

References

Bolter, J.D. (2002). Writing Space. computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. New York: Routledge.

NLG (1996). A pedagogy for Multiliteracies. Harvard Educational Review 66(1). 60-92

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9(5), 2-6. Retireved January 7, 2011 from EBSCOhost

Postman, N (1993). The Judgement of Thamus.  In N. Postman. Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology (pp. 3-20). New York: Vintage.

Ong, W. (2010). Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge.

Robinson, S.K. (2011). Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. West Sussex: Capstone