Some thoughts on teaching and technology

As my good friend Rick has said time and time again, good education should not be dependent upon electricity. I wholeheartedly agree with him, although the aspects of what I teach both in the library and here in this class seem counter to that statement. I would argue, however, that much of what we consider to be good practices in teaching with technology are grounded in good teaching practice, period. Take for example, using blogging to enable student writing and peer review. This is no different than the use of writing groups in an English classroom. Keeping a student blog - just another version of journaling. Creating web pages - making class magazines. The teaching remains the same, the media changes. In all cases, student interaction remains key.

That being the case, is it that important that we make use of the new media (seeing that paper and pencil still does the job - even better sometimes!). Kavalier and Flannigan's article brings to mind a couple of points for me in my own practice. First off, do students really need fluency in these new literacies? In my work at the WOU library, students need a better grounding in the "old literacies." Much of what is published is still based upon models for print publications. We can read online "newspapers," and "magazines." Scientific literature is printed in online "journals." From what I foresee, we will not go away from these models anytime soon. BUT, I do foresee dire consequences if students are not familiar with magazines and newspapers that they can pick up and read in their hands. K and F alluded to McLuhan's saying - "the medium is the message." In the library world, the medium counts for an awful lot. In the online realm, however, the medium has no importance whatsoever - because it's all the same medium!

Nevertheless, that's the direction that publishers are heading. Keeping in mind that "knowledge is power" it seems that it will be vitally important that students become fluent in these "new literacies." Not to become, as the authors put it, "digitally savvy." I think that our students will become "digitally savvy" on their own - they still learn by "play" and this is the easiest way to become familiar with digital technology. But, I think that our students will be headed into a bit of a trap in the future. First off, it's not as easy as one thinks to find necessary information on the Internet. Let me give you an example - I just found out the other day that one of the best places to find lay information on pet diseases was YouTube - the online video service. This is because owners are posting videos of their pet's symptoms allowing a viewer to compare their own pet. Imagine doing a great deal of your research using online photo and video databases - these things aren't easily picked up by Google. This is just one easy example. There is still quite a bit of important and powerful information locked behind databases that Google cannot reach into - one will have to know where to look for this information in order to retrieve it. At least it makes my job as a librarian that much more secure. The more insidious trap, however, is that Google gives one the impression that they are able to find all the information needed; this is very much a false impression. Those who know how to access information in the future will be the power brokers (of course this is my biased opinion as a librarian!).