Thursday, March 27, 2008
Chapter 8- Engaging Minds
Chapter 8 discusses the technologies of our time, and how modes such as language, script and communication have evolved our social constructs. The chapter illustrates how prior to technologies such as the Internet with virtual communities of thought, writing was mostly one directional, and biased to the author's viewpoint. Now with these communities that have many people contributing to the process, it is more "democratic" and there is a "cross fertilization of ideas." However, what I think is important to note, is that with these technologies, there needs to be more critical thinking imposed as we access areas of the web for information. These communities of thought do not have a censored publisher who reviews the information. I have had profs say in the past "Wikipedia better not show up on your bibliography" yet have never been docked for putting a book on that Random House published. I think that though the web is important to some as a means of communication, I would certainly lose an argument against, I wonder to what extent we need to teach our students about use of the web resources. Where do you think the line should be drawn when having students use the Internet in class or how much or little technology do you see yourself using?
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3 comments:
I think there needs to be a balance in teaching students about using both published literature and web resources in their papers or projects.
Computer technology is always changing and think teachers do need to spend some time teaching and showing children how to effectivly use these technologies. However, I wouldn't spend more time going over computer technology, than I would going over published literature. Both are important and need to be addressed.
This is an interesting discussion and I think that Wikis are an excellent example to discuss.
Wikis definitely exemplify the constructivist theory of knowledge (and learning). It is easy to see why someone with a Ph.D. founded on an Idealist philosophy would feel threatened or not understand Wikis.
In fact, there are M.A. and Ph.D. students whose courses include making contributions and amendments to Wikipedia. I think that we ought to teach students to use Wikipedia the same way that they use an encylopedia: not to verify information but as a reference text.
Texts published on the internet are not necessarily less reliable or valuable. If so, we would have to call the works of Kafka, Dostoyevki, and Hugo as such, since they are available at Project Gutenberg.
Is using a full-text article less academic? Does the academic rigour decline when a facsimile is made?
Canadians have not investigated the e-book and digital paper concept, which might greatly reduce the ecological footprint of some schools.
Sorry, it's hard to say what digital paper is.
Because it is so new, most of the definitions are being set by name brands. (That's normal in the 21st Century.)
By "digital paper", I meant both
a)those types of rough surfaces on which people can write with an artificial pen to input text into a computer, and
b)that special substance which can display the text of e-books without using much electricity (or damaging one's eyes and posture).
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