As I began gearing up for the coming semester, I went into the archives to see what I thought about the subject last year. I don’t think my thinking has changed much, even though a lot has changed in the last year. While is might seem odd to some, I find it useful to occasionally check my benchmarks and see if any of them have shifted. They do shift and the way they shift can be interesting and informative.
These are some of the questions we’ll address in this course.
- How have technologies shaped the economic, social, and political life and educational ideals and practices of our civilization?
- Who were the major contributors to the creation of our “technological society”?
- What have been the major positive and negative contributions of major technological innovations?
- What might be the long-term positive and negative effects on education and society of today’s new technologies?
- Who benefits most from new technologies?
- What epistemologies are inherent in particular technologies? How do we know what we know?
- What value biases (personal and political) are inherent in particular technologies?
In addition, I’d like to address some fundamental issues like
- What is culture?
- What’s the role of Education?
- Is it a universal role acrosss cultures?
- What constitutes technology?
- Can culture exist without technology?
- What constitutes ethical behavior? Is there a universal ethos?
- Can you be ethical and be a teacher?
For a little more background on the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet we’re about to start on, see Pownces and Twitters and Nings, Oh My.
January 14th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Many of these questions do not have one answer. It will be interesting to see what others in the class think.
January 14th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Yes. Intriguing, isn’t it?
January 15th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
One of the antrhopological definintions of culture is,
Culture is the attributes that make a group of people, unique from other groups of people.
So it is what makes us who we are?
Pretty vague isn’t it…….
January 16th, 2009 at 12:55 am
All these questions get my mind spinning in all different directions. I hope we just tackle a couple of these questions at a time.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I think many of these questions will lead us to continue some discussions that we began last semester, such as what is technology. I think the varied perspectives are what makes these classes so interesting. Also, we quickly become resources for each other and can gain varied insights into ideas for the classroom.
The most interesting question for me deals with the positive and negative effects on education and society of today’s new technologies. Just in my lifetime, I have seen technologies that were once considered a luxury, become necessity. I can also see that happening with newer technologies today, but I wonder if the classroom will ever embrace technology the way society has. Will they ever really see the improvement technology can make in education or will we continue to see merely lip service.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Culture is how people believe and interpret the world based on how they were raised or past experiences. I feel that education should address the different types of cultures represented in the classroom. Sometimes we teach according to “our” own specific culture and maybe not knowing neglect the different types of cultures in our classrooms.