Week 6: Weekly Article Review

Technology and Teaching: A Conversation among Faculty Regarding the Pros and Cons of Technology

This was a great read! In reflecting back on the article there were several points that stood out to me. I felt myself in a constant state of flux where I strongly agreed with one the author’s statements and then I found myself disagreeing with other points. Some points even caused me to re-evaluate my own stance on a topic.

Throughout the course of this article the two prevailing stances where as follows:

Against Technology – Technology is taking the humanity out of education.

ro Technology - Technology is opening many new gateways and expanding the possibilities of education.

I found myself somewhere in-between both stances. Whale I understand that in its simplest form education occurs in a classroom with the interaction between teacher and student. Now like Rebecca stated in the article, we are living in changing times in education as more and more classrooms are gravitating to an on-line presence. With society changing and with new technology releases coming almost daily, we do need to adapt and prepare students the best we can for the future.

I think technology is a big part of how we prepare students for the future as more and more technology will be at their fingertips. However, I disagree with Jon from the standpoint that technology automatically enhances the interaction between teacher and student. I would tend to agree more with Steven in the fact that technology can only enhance if both the teacher and student understand how to use the technology.

I also agree with Steven that students won’t be able to understand the sarcasm of humor in an online setting. I think this point Steven could even take farther as in you can’t teach or further educate students on how to interact in a face to face social setting or how to have a conversation with someone who has an opposing view point as them in an online setting.

To me this is the biggest issue in our society today. People don’t know how to have a conversation and respect the opinion of someone on the other side of the argument. We need to be able to have a conversation and be able to disagree and understand the other side rather than ignoring the differences and burying our heads in the sand. This is a soft skill that would benefit everyone to refine and gain more fluency on this issue.

If we take the face to face classroom environment out of education I would fear this would hinder society’s ability to communicate.