Group items tagged

The Friending Debate

Monday, April 23rd, for live and interactive FutureofEducation.com conversation with good friends Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis, authors of Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time . This webinar speaks to our next assignment on the future of education.

Have you ever said or thought this: "We didn't have [x] when I was a kid and I turned out okay"? You might be interested on an article shared by George Couros in Twitter. The author says if this argument is valid, so these others are too: "Buses? We walked to school barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways!", "Electricity? Pshaw! Do you know how dangerous those wires are? When we were kids we had oil lamps and candles and everything was fine.", "Agriculture? Hah! It's the ruin of society! Kids are just sitting around getting soft while they watch the crops grow. When I was a child we actually had to run after our food. We were tough, not like these kids today.", etc… Check it out!

The knee-jerk reactions that teachers (& yes, me too!) have against new technology applications are perfectly understandable. Change is not always easy, but attitudes will depend on how things are introduced and explored. I successfully avoided Facebook for a year until a friend sat me down and went through it (it was also the only way to communicate with her, so I had to!) Some of the negativity from teachers must be connected to how technologies are introduced to them. Being told "you are doing this, this and this now" without any explanation or support is bound to develop negativity.

Very detailed but concise timeline of every event related to technology in several fields... I loved they mention of one of my fav movies: "1999: The release of the movie "The Matrix" once again steps up the computer generated graphics technology field." Always thought movies have played an important role in the advance of technology... Movies make people dream about things that are not inspired by our daily lives...

I am amazed at how much was developed in such a short space of time. I am also impressed that Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first "Head of State" to write an email message..... and whatever happened to Netscape!!!

Well, this article couldn't be more interesting... It dates back to 1997, it is in the Journal of Technology Education by Virginia Tech. It seems that since 1990 the number of students graduating with technology education teaching degrees had plummeted notoriously and the doomsday for the tech teacher preparation programs would occur by 2005... I guess it didn't happen!

Well, Norma, I do think this is interesting and I think it might have happened. The article is specifically about "technology teachers," and there aren't that many of those anymore. Now, technology is not as much a standalone subject as it is integrated into the whole learning process. That's good, IMHO. But, at the same time, I think we've gotten away from offering computer science courses. That's bad, IMHO.

Hmmmm... That's true! I've been trying to remember how things were in Colombia a couple of years ago, and it seems the same phenomenon has happened. I remember how in college I took some technology courses for specific kinds of programs... then, they started disappearing and if I wanted a refresher I had to teach myself or find a friend. In my schools here I can see how the technology classes are used as a means to do something else through technology rather than studying technology by itself... It stopped being the object of study and became a means to achieve objectives in other areas. A clear sample of that: The technology teachers at my two schools started going to two or three schools, they are more kind of facilitators than instructors... I guess that's pretty bad for the kind of student who needs to learn formally, step by step, in a classroom setting.... For our students... well, my younger students know way more than me! And they didn't learn it form anybody! Just trial and error!