WEEK 4 Human Touch Over Technological Dependence

The first blogpost I would like to respond to is The Innovative Teachers "When tech teaches, what do teachers do?" I find this fascinating, and it very much reminds of a very complicated dilemma that halachik Jewry is dealing with nowadays as well; If all the books are available to everyone, what is the job of rabbis nowadays? And I think the answers to both questions are very similar.

To answer these a lead up question needs to be asked first, what do humans bring to the tables that books or electronic devices do not? And the answer to this is so simple, it's the same reason technology will never take over the world and humans will never fall in love with robots - technology can not show love. Technology brings all the existing information to anyone who requests it, but is thast really the goal of education? If the only goal of education was the acquisition of information then yes, all teachers can be let go. This is where i would like to bring in Cool Cat Teacher's blogpost "How we can stop teaching to the test and start empowering learning (for a change)" The point here again is that the point of education is not just information gathering and test taking, when our chuldren will go out to the real world, their ability to testtake will not help them anywhere. Again, the idea is to "empower learning" to teach the next generation the powers of knowledge and creativity. There are messages and techniques that can not be passed over through a text written in a book or on a computer. Do we really want our children to learn manners and communication skills from machines? The job of a teacher is not to give over technical information (for the most part) but rather to empower the next generation to make a difference, to be interested and connected to the world outside the classroom walls, to want to make the world the best posible place.

I think this is a very owerful message!

P.S. this does not in anyway mean that technology should not be used (in fact, I wrote about thsi in my previous post) the tools we are learning here are fabulous and cna make a huge difference in the classroom environment. Today was a bit of a reminder to not forget the real reasons I am going into education.

Week 3

Some thoughts after reading Lisa Nielsens insights into the use of media amongst teens and tweens. Lisa is attempting to quell the knee-jerk reactions parents had to the results discovered by the Common Sense Census. The Common Sense Census "is a large-scale study that explores young people's use of the full range of media and technology", and its results were startling to some. I would like to focus on one point raised by Lisa in her blog "The Innovative Educator"

One section in lisas blogpost is titled "Restrictions are ineffective". in this section she attempts to argue that not only are restrictions ineffective but rather are counter intuitive. Basically she is trying to argue that each form of media can be used for good; teens can interact with the outside world through social media, gaming systems can be used for exercise when the weather outside is unfavorable to natural forms of exercise. I have no problem with this, Lisa is making a totally truthful point here. But regardless i feel the need to interject here.

It seems that there are two sides of the spectrum being represented here; the parents knee-jerk reactions representing the side for restrictions and Lisa opposing that. I think we need not fool ourselves, and some sort of middle ground here, a point which Lisa mentions as well. Before restricting chidren from using media, we need to check how they are using it and what purpose it serves in their life. if they are rotting away in front of the TV 8 hours a day, isolated in their room, plauing video games, some restrictions might very well help. On the other hand if someone really found some sort of community online that is a place fo them to express themselves and is filling some sort of void in their life, why restrict them?! The point I am trying to make here, and this is very important for our course as well (especially in a Jewish environment) is that no rules should be made here, media can be used in extremely useful and productiv on one hand, and very wasteful nd harmful ways on the other. this same thing applies for the classroom, and we always have to be checking ourselves, if we're adding good to this world or not!