Author: magdalena

Whenever we talk about education everyone has something to say. All of us have been through school (with pleasant or traumatic experiences) and we can share what was well or terribly done inside the classroom.

In this occasion, I’d like to discuss how technology is taught in classroom. For that I have selected two little pieces of readings and two videos. I will briefly refer to the sources and give you some questions that will guide our conversation next Monday. (It’s not mandatory to answer the questions.)

Sweeny’s article describes how new literacies can be integrated into writing instruction.

• What do you think about the standards and skills proposed to be developed in this article?
• Language is always changing. In this sense, it is normal that writing is also changing. What do you think about the changes in writing and the resistance that exists towards it?
• What do you think about the new resources proposed to been integrated in the classroom? Can you think about other resources or ideas that would be useful in a pedagogical environment?

“The story” by Warlick is a short science fiction piece that represents school in 2015.

• How do you imagine classes in 5, 10, or 20 years?
• Do you remember your classes at school? Do you think that those classes would be still applicable with these Digital Natives Kids?

In the talk “How to learn? From mistakes” by Diana Laufenberg, the author shares three key points that she has learned in her experience as a teacher.

• What do you think about learning in an age where information is everywhere?
• “Experience the learning, empowering student voice and embracing the failure”. Why are these ideas key points for the future in education?

Regarding the last video: “Bring on the Learning Revolution” by Ken Robinson, I’d like us to think about the following questions:

• Does everyone learn in the same way?
• How can we democratize education through technology?

“[T]he relative lack of concern about, and research on, children’s encounters with racist content […].                                  We worry primarily about children’s sexuality.” (Livingstone, p. 176)

This quote shows that the moral discussion of the use of Internet is based on a genital moral. I don’t deny that this is a huge point to consider, but there are others moral problems that should be studied too. You can damage a child not only in a physical way; there is a lot of psychological damage that can be infringed. For example: the liberties that have some totalitarian groups to express their point of view as the neo-Nazi sites, as Livingstone pointed out.

But there are others moral problems strongly discussed through the use of Internet: intellectual property is an excellent example of this. The points of music and movies have been discussed in class, so I want to bring another actual example. As a fan of Chilean football (soccer) I wanted to keep seeing the games on real time even if I’m living in Canada and I found a page (http://rojadirecta.com/) that linked and showed the games. But even when the page (the author of it) won the trial of the intellectual property in Spain, the government of USA blocks the website (as you can see in the link).

Another moral point to discuss is the concentration of power of mass media on the Internet. One more personal example: in Chile there is a project to construct hydroelectric dam in the south of the country (mostly in Patagonia). The ambientalist groups reject this project because the 60% of the energy generated in the country is consumed by the large mining (see http://www.patagoniasinrepresas.cl/final/index-en.php -I linked it in English for your comfort)  so to construct a hydroelectric dam just benefits the mining. But the news conglomerates are publishing in the media that next year would exist power rationing by the water shortage and, in this way, generate public opinion to benefit the HydroAysen Project.

One last moral problem I want to point out: the imaginary construction of female bodies and subjectivities through virtual sites designed for girls as Barbie Girls (http://www.barbiegirls.com/). I visited this virtual world, but in order to start “playing” I need to create my avata. My options weren’t so many: the same doll (or body) that you change dress, colour and name it. The idea of avatars having the same body with different accesories seems extremly ideological and polemic but society seems to see the dangers in the chat room.

These kinds of behaviours should be subject to debate: what are the ethics in a virtual space? Because if conglomerates want to censorship material protect by copyright, while the conservatives want to censor the space from a genital morality; other social spaces have the right to build their demands and built a more democratic space.

Don Tapscott’s text was particularly refreshing for me because what I have been listening in the school environment is a apocalyptic vision of the new generations. Teachers complain all the time about the difficulties to reach these hyperactive, deconcentrated and technological child. In this sense, what I have been listening is have being theorized in Mark Bauerline y Nicholas Carr. In very pedestrian words we could said that represent the idea that “it’s always best in the past”.  I share with Tapscott that teachers must change the way that they have been making classes, they must perform classes centered in the students, where the the cooperation must be central when they plan the learning activities and in this way develop the great talents that new generations have.

But one of the things that I find particularly disturbing in the text of Tapscott is the generalizations that he made about the ages where the Net Generation began.  I know that all the study is centered in North America, but was impossible not to   contrast the difference between this specific point of view and the relation with technology-age in my country, particularly in all the little stories that were interspersed in the chapters where was reflected a specific way of living and I can only see this kind of behaviors in a very particular social class: the very rich one (only the 8% of my country).

In this sense I find more appropriated the description that appears in the introduction of Palfrey & Gasser’s book “Born Digital”: “This narrative is about those who wear earbuds of an iPod on the subway to their first job, not those of us who still remember how to operate a Sony Walkman or remember buying LPs or eight-track tapes.” (4) Here the most important characteristic of the definition is not the age but the things the people do with the technologies they have.

This, I think, is a key point because even if I could be considered as a part of the Net Generation according to Tapscott’s words, this “community” is not so extended in my country. There the materials and technologies are so expensive that just a small part of the population can access to this goods. In this sense, the more I was reading the article, more I felt part of the Boomer Generation in  how they relate with technology (how much time I watched television when I was a child, the way I searched for YouTube videos, and how many times I posted in Facebook) than with Net Generation.

Therefore, I believe that the difference between generations are centered in the economic development and possibility of use of technologies in each country and not in the age of every person.