קטגוריה: טכנולוגיה

שרסקי מציין שבמהלך השנים, ובהתאם למצב הרוח שלו, הוא היה מסוגל לאמץ כל אחד מהתיאורים האלה … וגם לשלול אותם. עם זאת, הוא כותב שעבורו, יותר מכל דבר אחר, התיאור המשכנע ביותר הוא שהטכנולוגיה מבטאת תקווה. בסיום המאמרון הוא כותב:

When I think about teaching before access to technology, I didn't have this hope of possibility. I see teachers today way more engaged, way more excited about teaching than ever before. That’s what technology does. It starts with access, it continues with support and encouragement and it can lead to change. I've seen it happen.

What I try to share is that these tools are about possibilities and mindsets. They offer hope that you can do things differently, that students can learn in new ways, that you can learn in new ways. When you have hope you are less likely to settle, your eyes and ears remain open to new ideas and your curiosity is piqued.

בהרצאה שלו פוסטמן מונה חמישה "רעיונות" בנוגע לשינוי טכנולוגי. כל אחד מהם צריך, גם היום, לעורר אצלנו הרהור לגבי המקום שהטכנולוגיות שלנו תופסות בחיינו. לקראת סוף ההרצאה שלו פוסטמן מונה את כולם, יחד עם טיפת הרחבה:

And so, these are my five ideas about technological change. First, that we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price. Second, that there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners. Third, that there is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated the oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on. Fourth, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates. And fifth, technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us.

One might say, then, that a sophisticated perspective on technological change includes one’s being skeptical of Utopian and Messianic visions drawn by those who have no sense of history or of the precarious balances on which culture depends. In fact, if it were up to me, I would forbid anyone from talking about the new information technologies unless the person can demonstrate that he or she knows something about the social and psychic effects of the alphabet, the mechanical clock, the printing press, and telegraphy. In other words, knows something about the costs of great technologies.

רגעים כאלה בדרך כלל מעוררים הרהורים כלליים – למה בכלל אני כותב, האם לדברים שנכתבים כאן יש הד שמצדיק להקדיש זמן לכתיבתם. נדמה לי שבגלל זה, כאשר אני סוף סוף מצליח להתיישב לכתוב אני בוחר להעלות כאן הרהורים במקום לכתוב על אירוע ספציפי. אינני יודע אם משהו דומה קורה למרטין וולר, אבל השבוע הוא גם העלה הרהור בנוגע לאמירות נפוצות בתחום התקשוב בחינוך.

וולר כותב על התהליך שבו טכנולוגיות חדשות, טכנולוגיות שרק לפני זמן די קצר הלהיבו אותנו, הופכות להיות מובנות מאליהן כך שאנחנו מפסיקים להתרגש מהן. הוא כותב שבימיהם הראשונים של כלים רבים, אנשי חינוך רבים הקשורים לתקשוב (כולל הוא עצמו) חטאו בהתלהבות יתר:

At the time, the combination of user generated content, wide connectivity, social networking, mobile devices seemed to open up possibilities. I still find it amazing that I have such a rich, global network of peers, all of whom are smarter than me, and most of whom I haven't met. I would argue that this optimism, and slight discarding of critical powers we felt wasn't a failing however, it was a necessity. By engaging in this new world whole-heartedly one could really get the benefits and also potentially shape the possible futures we were envisaging.

So, I'll make a plea here – we like simple answers, we like people who give us simple answers. They're sexy. They're convenient. They're tweetable. But life isn't like that, and actually the messy, nuanced, complex picture is more interesting. Be suspicious of those oh so sweet tasting simple answers on either side of the technology divide.

מהכתבה ב-The Marker אפשר להכיר טיפה את learni. הקימו אותה:

שורה של יזמים ותיקים, ומפתח פלטפורמת למידה בספרים דיגיטליים על גבי טאבלט. את החברה הקימו ב-2011 היזם והמשקיע רני כהן (מנכ"ל), היזם דב מורן (יו"ר), מריוס נכט ממייסדי צ'ק פוינט (חבר במועצת המנהלים), הח"כ לשעבר דדי צוקר (סמנכ"ל שיווק ומכירות), ואורי קפלן (סמנכ"ל תפעול).

הפלטפורמה משמשת גם מורים כמערכת לניהול השיעורים ומעקב אחר התקדמות התלמידים. המורה מקבל תמונת מצב המשקפת מי מתלמידי הכתה קורא בספר בזמן שיעור ומי משתמש בטאבלט לשימושים אחרים.

זה לא סוד שתלמידים באים לבית ספר ומתים משעמום. החלטנו לנסות לעשות שינוי בחינוך…. המטרה שלנו היא להעצים, להעשיר ולגרום לחוויית הלמידה להשתנות ולהיות הרבה יותר מעניינת, חברתית וטכנולוגית.

What children see or interact with on the screen is only a representation of things in the real world. The screen symbols aren’t able to provide as full an experience for kids as the interactions they can have with real world people and things. And while playing games with apps and computers could be considered more active than TV viewing, it is still limited to what happens between the child and a device — it doesn’t involve the whole child’s body, brain, and senses. In addition, the activity itself and how to do it is already prescribed by a programmer. What the child does is play according to someone else's rules and design. This is profoundly different from a child having an original idea to make or do something.

Today’s cultural pressures on children—media saturation, materialism, test-driven schools, and the fast pace of life—threaten to undermine some of the basic building blocks of healthy development.

It is hideously simplistic to privilege one media over another, especially when decrying the death of creativity or loss of innocence. For example, nobody ever questions the cognitive value or impact on creativity of a kid holding a Hotwheels car and saying, “Vroom Vroom,” over and over again for hours at a time. We value that activity, right? Do we have any evidence that it is more beneficial than a toy with batteries or Internet connection? Does a wooden toy increase creativity more than one made of plastic? If drawing with a crayon is better than drawing with your finger on a screen, why is it so? How do we know? Is drawing with a crayon better for childhood development than drawing with chalk?

What role are parents playing in the overregulation of children’s play through overprotection and over-scheduling? What is the impact of homework on play? What has silent lunch and the end of recess done to children’s creative development?

How can having the ability to answer any question you wonder about instantly be bad for children? If you make simple things easy to do, you make complexity possible.

Researchers who have tracked children’s creativity for 50 years are seeing a significant decrease in creativity among children for the first time, especially younger children from kindergarten through sixth grade. This decline in creativity is thought to be due at least in part to the decline of play.

The main findings of this study were that there was no evidence of change in some aspects of children's pretend play and improvements in other areas. There has been no evidence of change in children's pretend play, from 1985 through 2008, in terms of organization of the play story and amount and range of affect expression. Imagination has increased in recent play samples as has comfort engaging in the play task. It is encouraging that these cognitive and affective processes in play have remained the same or improved, given the decline in unstructured time for children.

It is also possible that the complexities and challenges of modern culture require creative problem-solving and imagination to function from day to day.

Seldom do these futurists acknowledge in their rosy predictions that while many parents, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers inhabit either the Utopian or Skeptic poles, many others cluster in the middle of the continuum. Many of those who hug the middle know that present and past school uses of technologies show great promise for student learning but contain serious flaws; sometimes they even wince at especially foolish claims Utopians make. Overall, however, most believe technologies in or out of school will ultimately benefit students and teachers.

Are kids really motivated by technology?

My answer often catches participants by surprise: You can't motivate students with technology because technology alone isn’t motivating. Worse yet, students are almost always ambivalent toward digital tools. While you may be completely jazzed by the interactive whiteboard in your classroom or the wiki that you just whipped up, your kids could probably care less.

They are motivated by issues connected to fairness and justice. They are motivated by the important people in their lives, by the opportunity to wrestle with the big ideas rolling around in their minds, and by the often-troubling changes they see happening in the world around them.

Technology’s role in today’s classroom, then, isn’t to motivate. It’s to give students opportunities to efficiently and effectively participate in motivating activities built around the individuals and ideas that matter to them.

Gates officials hope the devices, known as Q Sensors, can become a common classroom tool, enabling teachers to see, in real time, which kids are tuned in and which are zoned out.

Existing measures of student engagement, such as videotaping classes for expert review or simply asking kids what they liked in a lesson, "only get us so far," said Debbie Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation. To truly improve teaching and learning, she said, "we need universal, valid, reliable and practical instruments" such as the biosensors.

Still, if the technology proves reliable, it may in the future be used to assess teachers, Robinson acknowledged. "It's hard for one to say what people may, at some point, decide to do with this," she said.

These bracelets, as I understand it, would be worn by students to measure how engaged they are, how bored they are, how they respond to their teachers. If they are bored, it won’t look good for the teacher. If students who show a high level of engagement, the teacher will get credit. The teachers too will wear the bracelet, to find out how engaged or bored they are. If this technology works, it will provide a foolproof tool for teacher evaluation. Or that’s the idea behind it.

I’m sorry. I think this is madness. Is there a mad scientist or psychologist advising the Gates Foundation? …

This stuff crosses the line from legitimate research to investing in technologies to control and manipulate people by monitoring their emotions.

… it's just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn't there as it is to live in one where what you don't see is.

Claims about the power of new electronic devices to “revolutionize” schooling are a dime a dozen. Yet, if they are nearly worthless, why have smart people said them over and over again?

There are far more electronic devices in schools than when Seymour Papert wrote in 1984. Students use cell phones, personal computers, and tablets at home and in school. Ditto for teachers. Classrooms have been equipped with interactive whiteboards. So why is Arne Duncan calling for a “fundamental re-thinking of how our schools function?”

The reason is that while there is much hardware and software in classrooms, how teachers teach and students learn have remained remarkably stable over the decades.

What technology enthusiasts, however, forget, neglect, stumble over – pick a verb – are the multiple purposes of tax-supported schools in a democracy. They and many others futurists err – my choice of the verb – in equating access to information with becoming educated. Even worse, these very smart people ignore the crucial and historical purposes public schools have served in a democracy.

Tax-supported public schools have been and are social, political, and moral institutions whose job is to help children and youth acquire multiple literacies, enter the labor market well prepared, vote, serve on juries, contribute to their communities, think for themselves, and live full and worthwhile lives.

קובן כותב שאנשי חינוך רבים כבר "יודעים" את התשובה לשאלה הזאת, או ליתר דיוק, הם כבר החליטו להשקיע כסף רב בטכנולוגיות דיגיטאליות, ולכן הם נעולים על תשובה מסויימת, וספק אם הם באמת מעוניינים בתשובה המעוגנת במחקרים או בנסיון. עבור אחרים, שאולי עדיין אינם משוכנעים, קובן מציע שאלה אחרת שכדאי לשאול לפני ששואלים על האפקטיביות:

במהלך השבוע לאחר הפרסום, המאמרון של קובן זכה ל-80 תגובות מבערך 15 קוראים, כך שהדיון במאמרון ארוך בהרבה מהמאמרון עצמו. הדיון מרתק, אבל במידה רבה הוא נראה כשיח חרשים. כל צד מציג את עמדתו, ונוצר הרושם שהסיכוי שהצדדים בוויכוח על התקשוב החינוכי יגיעו לעמק השווה די קלוש. יש מגיבים שטוענים שכל נושא התקשוב בחינוך איננו אלא אחיזת עיניים ובזבוז כספים, ומולם יש המדגישים שהתקשוב לא ישפיע באופן משמעותי על החינוך כל עוד הוא איננו חודר לתוך המערכת בצורה מאסיבית, ועם סדר יום חינוכי שונה בתכלית מזה של היום. (יש גם אלה שנאחזים בכל מחקר שמראה, ולו באופן מינימלי, שהתקשוב אכן מניב תוצאות חיוביות לפי המדדים המקובלים של היום.)

האם מדובר בוויכוח סרק? לאור העובדה שפחות או יותר כולם מבינים שבעתיד הלא כל כך רחוק כל תלמיד יגיע לבית הספר עם מכשיר דיגיטאלי כמו שהיום הוא מגיע עם קלמר, יתכן שכן. אולי אנחנו דורשים תשובה לשאלת האפקטיביות של התקשוב פשוט מפני שהתקשוב עדיין די חדש בנוף החינוכי. בעצם, כך טוען גרג פסטה בתגובה שלו למאמרון של קובן. פסטה מבקש לתת קצת פרספקטיבה כלפי שאלת האפקטיביות. הוא מעיר: