Education and Technology

By: Carly Le Blanc

10/10/07

A main component of our class discussions has been how technology, especially literacy has crippled modern societies ability to access the sacred. In my Sociology class we are currently reading articles talking about the unequal access to technology that exists in our education system. Educators are concerned about the lack of computers and other technologies that minorities and schools in low-income areas do not have. They believe that their education is suffering because they lack these tools. Parents want their children to have this access because they want them to assimilate with our technologically savvy culture. However, we also read articles by those who do not see a problem in this inequality. Their main argument is that there is no research to conclude that computers improve student learning. One woman commented that computers actually limit student’s capacity for communication and another stressed the importance of “hands-on” experience. One author, Lowell Monke stated, “There is a huge qualitative difference between learning about something, which requires only information, and learning from something, which requires that the learner enter into a rich and complex relationship with the subject at hand.” He emphasizes the importance of attaching meaning to learning and the difficulties in the “reverse adaptation” that occurs when technology is introduced. We have to reshape our lives when we introduce a television or computer into our daily routine. Marshall Mc Luhan said, “Consumption and manipulation of symbolic, abstract information is not an adequate substitute for concrete, firsthand involvement with objects, people, nature, and community, for it ignores the child’s primary educational need-to make meaning out of experience.” I just thought it was interesting that this argument or that technology causes us to interact through symbols is a debate even in the educational system.