9.4 Education and Cultural/Personal Preferences

4) Is there a potential problem being stored up for people if 'education' is tailored to fit into their cultural and personal preferences?

I believe that a potential problem in tailoring education to an individual’s specific needs is that what fits one person may not fit another and we may not have the resources to offer each individual a different set of teaching methods. However, I do not believe this problem to be anything new, as at the moment people can be divided into visual, aural or active learners and therefore will find it easier to learn in different ways.

Some people, like me, may have a more traditional view towards education, and believe that actually writing rather than word processing, and having something explained to you face to face holds many benefits to sitting in front of a computer and having information delivered into your inbox.

I believe that this way the process of socialization is lost, which I see as being one of the main problems with the continuing development of technology and its increasing affect on the way we live our day to day lives. If people’s cultural and personal preferences dictate that learning remotely via the computer is best for them, what will happen to the institution of schooling and the ideologies which are installed into us through this? I doubt a computer will be able to offer the same sets of attitudes and values, and you could be much more open to being influenced by all the nasties which exist on the Internet, for instance pro-anorexia web-sites, pro terrorism web-sites, web sites encouraging odd cults etc. etc. This is made all the more worse by the fact that at the age in which education takes places, young people are attempting to find their own sense of self, so being negatively influenced at this stage could potentially be extremely damaging,

Of course this is an extremely cyber-dystopian view point, as I am only pointing out the potential negatives of this. There is a possibility that eLearning could also bring its fair share of benefits for the individual, as it could open people’s eyes to view points they would not be taught in a school environment and encourage cyber democracy. However, in my eyes the potential threats seem to outweigh the potential benefits to the individual.

W9. Task 3. Should Education Stretch a person?

Yes, I agree that education should stretch someone. By stretch I mean that you should be encouraged to reach your full potential, and if technology is the best way to do this, I think it should be embraced.

For example, lots of people find it difficult to engage with material in certain forms, this may be done to their individual interests, or a genetic disposition like ADHD or simply because they perceive something as not worth learning. If, as Prensky suggests, material were to be presented in a more digestible format for example through computer games, and it was found that this was successful in encouraging people to engage I think it is worth considering.

Within the journal article, ‘Designing and testing a web-based board game for teaching information literacy skills and concepts’ it was found that students who were taught literacy skills via a computer game had accuracy levels 20 points higher than they would have been if the answers were guessed, so there is evidence to suggest that learning via the Internet has merit in teaching students information literacy skills and concepts.

However, a danger of this approach would be that students would come to become reliant upon this type of learning, which would not be helpful for them in their general lives, as it leaves me thinking that people may come to find it impossible to simply sit down with a book and take in information. If education were to do this it would be in no way ‘stretching’ the pupils, rather it would be increasing the effects of the digital divide, in that we’d be left with half of the population learning through traditional methods, and half learning through web based methods.

Marky, K. (2008) “Designing and testing a web-based board game for teaching information literacy skills and concepts” Library Hi Tech, Vol. 26 (Issue 4) P.663-681

W8. Task 3. Criticism No. 2 Teaching Digital Natives

Here the author describes the problems faced as a result of teachers who are digital immigrants using the types of teaching methods they were taught by in order to teach digital natives. He argues that as a result of this shift digital natives learn in a different way to the previous generation, so teaching methods equally need to change.

My problem with this is that the suggestions the author makes are inevitably flawed in that he himself is a digital immigrant. It is all very well suggesting that digital natives will learn more effectively if they are taught by a video game, and this seems to go with the logic he is describing, but does this necessarily mean that we ought to be using this method to teach spelling, geography, or chemistry? I am tempted to think not, in that school is an environment which lends itself to learning and education, having a teacher stand at the front of the classroom is something I associate with learning, and taking in information. On the other hand, sitting on the Internet is something I associate with my free time, and socializing ahead of taking in facts. I think a clear distinction and set of cultural practices are needed for both in order to prevent learning becoming trivialized.

And in this case, surely to put across his argument in a format which is more relevant to the digital natives, his article should have instead been represented through a “shoot ‘em up” style video game rather than an uninspiring black text on white background with no images?

URL: http://www.ascd.org/authors/ed_lead/el200512_prensky.html

Week 7- China: Its Distance Higher-Education System by Zhao Yuhui

One issue which struck me when reading this article was the selection of the presenters who are used to televise lectures over China. The article reads:

“Presenters are chosen from key universities all over China. In its initial, it is necessary for TVUs to adopt textbooks used in conventional universities and to choose academics with a sound university teaching back-ground as presenters, so that a high standard of tuition can be guaranteed. These two measures have proved to be effective.”

Whilst a solid academic background it can be assumed will mean that the presenter has a sound knowledge of their topic, and “knows their stuff”, as it were, does this necessarily justify the numbers of students to whom the lectures are transmitted to given the lack of interactivity, students aren't really able to engage more powerfully with the information which is being presented to them.

I would suggest that although there are opportunities for teachers and students to meet face to face, to ask questions and to have homework marked, in this case as there is a lack of people who are able to actually teach, and there seemed to be a rush to educate people in order to have a thriving economy, using TVU seemed like a perfect way to solve this problem in a temporary way until more individuals who were able to teach others came out the other side of the system.

Whilst I do not personally think that having one person teach masses of people is at all ideal, in the way in which ideologies are encouraged through institutions, the way in which China had dealt with it, for example by providing that face-to-face tuition that the televised lectures lacked, overcome many of the instant problems of it, and therefore allowed education to continue, in circumstances where is possibly would have not.

Zhao Yuhui, China: Its Distance Higher-Education System, http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/Technology/broadcast/tv-02.html [Accessed 05/03/09]