Education 2.0 & 3.0

Last fall, professors told us about their plans to experiment this year with technology-enabled teaching. Now they reflect on the successes and shortcomings.

Using technology for learning makes sense. Technology creates access, transparency, and opportunity. Any smartphone or tablet is media incarnate–video, animation, eBooks, essays, blog posts, messages, music, games. The modalities of light, color, and sound all arranged just so to communicate a message or create an experience.

"Many new teachers fresh out of college and other pathways to teaching possess new ideas, but they have to prepare for any challenge in the classroom, especially regarding using technology. Edtech has greatly expanded what a classroom can accomplish, so new teachers have to acclimate to these technologies as quickly as possible. Here are some basic edtech options that teachers need to know when they first step into their own classrooms."

“This is a work of criticism. If it were literary criticism, everyone would immediately understand the underlying purpose is positive. A critic of literature examines a work, analyzing its features, evaluating its qualities, seeking a deeper appreciation that might be useful to other readers of the same text. In a similar way, critics of music, theater, and the arts have a valuable, well-established role, serving as a helpful bridge between artists and audiences. Criticism of technology, however, is not yet afforded the same glad welcome. Writers who venture beyond the most pedestrian, dreary conceptions of tools and uses to investigate ways in which technical forms are implicated in the basic patterns and problems of our culture are often greeted with the charge that they are merely ‘antitechnology’ or ‘blaming technology.’ All who have recently stepped forward as critics in this realm have been tarred with the same idiot brush, an expression of the desire to stop a much needed dialogue rather than enlarge it. If any readers want to see the the present work as ‘antitechnology,’ make the most of it. That is their topic, not mine.”