Media and Children: How technology changes us
I am very fortunate to teach a very exciting graduate course this summer: A course on the use of educational technologies in mathematics and science teaching. This course makes me think about a lot of things, including how technology changes us as people, as learners, as parents… This talk was mentioned by one of the students and I think it is of great interest to all of us.
As much as this course challenges me and makes me stay at work far beyond my regular working hours (if there ever existed), I am very grateful for this opportunity. This remind me why I am so excited of being a professor at UBC in the Faculty of Education: it challenges me to think how we can engage our students in the meaningful learning of mathematics and science… It also challenges me to think how our exposure to technology may affect our learning. The talk by Dimitri Christakis makes me think again and again how learning of our children is influenced by their exposure to technology from the day they were born and how are we using it in the classroom. On the other hand, we just discussed a book by Seymour Papert (1980) in class today where he writes about how young children can learn mathematics using a play in the context of programing (LOGO language). These are interesting connections… Technology, like anything else in life has its pros and cons and we have to be mindful of them…