Being a history person myself, I find the internet an amazing place. It allows me to journey into ages that I had never seen before: looking at artifacts, first hand accounts and finding new resources. However, as mentioned in Chapter 5, the notable historian David McCullough argues, " Learning is not to be found on a printout. It is not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and mostly from great books."
Now I can see his point in that the internet is an extremely vast place, where there is a lot of virtual garbage to sift through. Sites such as wikipedia, although informative, at times can have great inaccuracies and blatant bias. (This is also true of many books that are in print - even some of the great books!) This can lead readers to believe false information and thus making misinformed or naive decisions. However, the answer to this problem is to become your own librarian - fact checking, thinking analytically and searching as an expert.
While McCullough chooses to devalue one of the greatest technological accomplishments human kind has ever seen, it is our responsibility as teachers to utilize it. (The internet is also unprecedented in the number of people that have worked together to accomplish one common goal - knowledge.) I have said it before and I will say it again - technology is not going away. It is just becoming more expansive and involved. And our students will be the first to be engaging in each new advance. We need to be speaking to our students and our communities in the language they speak - the language of technology. This is how our world functions. We are always connected and learning most of our news through it. We need to be technologically literate and be able to become archeologists digging for accurate information.
As a final note I feel that it is important to point out that knowledge is not always, in fact many times it has nothing to do with, reading something out of a book. In fact, that is why there are teachers in the first place. Knowledge is many times what can't be just put in a book, but discussed and questioned. Most of the valuable knowledge that we contain has not been placed there by the books we have read, but the conversations we have had. Teachers question students with provocative questions and push them into new areas that open doors.
Questions:
1. Does the internet enhance or devalue knowledge?
2. As a teacher, how can we pre-sort data so that our students are reaching the valuable knowledge?
3. Is McCullough right that knowledge is best found in books?
Hi Monica,
ReplyDeleteI was in shock when I did hours in my old high school and every single classroom has a smartboard now and most classes I was in were actively using it. The kids in these classes won't understand what its like to be so excited when they walk into a class and a beat-up television with VCR is turned on sitting in front of the room because they're going to watch a movie that day.
One piece of technology one of my chemistry professors used was a document camera (http://www.fullcompass.com/product/440532.html?utm_source=googleps&utm_medium=shopping&utm_campaign=googleps&gclid=CJWWt724xrUCFUhV4AodhXgAmg), which is a camera setup over a document that displays onto the board. The teacher actively writes on the document with blank spaces on it (the students are also given a copy of the same document to follow along and make notes.) This kept students paying attention for when the teacher was going to write on the document and allowed students to stop and ask questions. The teacher would narrate each and every step as well as making notes.
Also, reading and talking about a chapter is so important and works, but I find getting actual footage of a historical event or videos related to the lesson are so effective. When I was younger I always liked when textbooks would show pictures, probably why my biology book was the only textbook I enjoyed reading from.
I think one of the best ways teachers can utilize the internet is giving students specific websites or videos to utilize as opposed to students learning from a biased/inaccurate website and having to unlearn any false information.
You make a great point John. The technology that we were used to as students has completely changed and has therefore changed the way that students look at material. But nothing can replace good old fashion multi-dimensional teaching. It sounds like the chemistry professor kept to that, while still bringing in new technology (however we had similar technology in our classrooms with the overhead with translucent paper...remember those?)
DeleteI was shocked to see how heavily teachers now rely on the smartboards. Blackboards are obsolete in some schools, used now as a glorified bulletin board.
How quickly technologies, and our educations, change.
Hello Monica,
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you mentioned that there are many books out there full of inaccuracies and biases. Although I personally love books and find great value in their contents, I think it's also important to remember that there are many advantages and disadvantages to both books and the internet. It seems that teachers often find themselves choosing one side over the other to emphasize to their students. Perhaps we should instead be teaching our students to use both books and the internet to cross-check facts to ensure accuracy and objectivity from one to the other. Although much knowledge can be acquired from books, the internet provides so many opinions on various topics that just cannot be found in published books. If we can confidently teach out students how to discriminate between points of view and think critically about claims made, we can trust them with sifting through all of this online information to enhance their own opinions and knowledge.
You pretty much took the words out of my mouth. When it comes to teaching our classes two words come to mind - responsibility and balance. We, as educators, need to look at where we are getting our information to teach our classes and guide them to appropriate resources. Only through proper responsible instruction will they then know how to sift through resources both print and online. We also need to balance our lessons, utilizing many forms of resources so that our students have an accurate and full bodied lesson.
DeleteIn my blog I used the same quote as you did, the one about great books being actual text and not on the internet. I like the first question you pose, since the last two were very similar to the ones I posted for this chapter on Sunday. In the first question you ask will technology increase or decrease knowledge, and I believe it will do both. The technology out there is very useful in helping people learn new materials, master techniques, have everything at their fingertips and find out information they may have never known. On the other hand technology stops people from going out and exploring themselves, problem solving, and decreases their thinking capacity.
ReplyDeleteI believe that one of the greatest disadvantages of our age is the loss of socialization. Although we claim that we are great social networkers, we lose the tangible skill of one on one interaction. And this is not only true of our personal interactions, but our interactions with nature, learning, exploring and a myriad of other things. Everything is so accessible that we forget that there are other things to discover and experience. Instead we are second hand account learners - learning from others who actually did something.
DeleteHowever, I think that as educators this allows us the unique opportunity to combine real life experiences and exploration with technology. We could create opportunities for our students to explore and create resources on the internet that journals what they have learned - which is very similar to what we are doing.