Does Technology help or hurt classroom instruction?
Even deeper is the issue of whether technology aids or harms learning. People will take their sides quickly on this issue. Should we allow computers in the classroom? Should we make all the professors learn powerpoint? Should all classrooms be wired for the web? One thing to keep in mind is that technology has ordering power. A majority of fundamental questions now revolve around whether technology is useful or not, it orders a majority question and decision we make as educators in the Western world.
One thing we discovered in this discussion about pedagogy and technology was: Technology often times controls the pedagogy, rather than the pedagogy controlling the way technology is used.
People are worried that if the school offers “podcasts” of lectures the students won’t come to class. This is a real concern, and one that gets at some “base” questions about what it is we are attempting to do in the classroom. If our lecture is the basis for our whole pedagogical style then handing out audio files from a class leaves us vulnerable to the power of technology. But if handing out an audio file is only a small part of what happens in the classroom, and the classroom is still the laboratory where understanding and experimentation takes place, then we may be all right.
But using technology in the classroom will continue to raise questions, and we must first be serious about a technology free pedagogy, so that the technology we do use is only a tool and not a crutch.
posted by Integrating Technology @ 5:19 PM
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