Cheaters, Heidegger, and the White Devil

Daniel Sturgis questions whether cheating via the iphone by using digital recordings of course material is actually the beginning of a new method of learning. I think he's on to something important. Some of the points he makes about audio files being an aid in learning to those with auditory learning styles are certainly important, but also not the hot issue teachers have with the technology. Rather, we tend to bemoan the easiness of having information ready to access at all times, which makes it unnecessary to memorize facts. We heard it about the use of calculators in schools, and now we hear it about the use of mobile technology.

Somehow, we feel that "these darn kids" are getting off easy (perhaps destroying society?) because they don't have to memorize the things we did as kids. Is this the old up the hill barefoot to school story? And I don't think that attitude is necessarily helpful, because the fact is technology is here to stay, and it's going to get even more mobile by the time we're in nursing homes and the darn kids are keeping our machines beeping.

Sturgis asks, "The relevant question is whether the student gets anything more from the podcats" than from reading by itself. Great question, great point. It doesn't have to be about not doing the work we did as yougins. It doesn't have to be about jumping through the hoops and suffering through the hurdles we did in college. We know more about learning now. We also have some different objectives. What's important is if it helps the student meet the goal, which is, perhaps, managing the information with a critical eye and reflecting upon the values of the many billion tidbits one can find floating the web. As Sturgis states, "If we continue to emphasize the value of memorizing fafcts, these students will have leess to contibute to the world than those students who hve learned to do something intersting with facts. "

Our worldview has changed, and it has very much been shaped by technology. What it means to be in society is different for our children than it was for us - than it was for our ancestors in the outhouse. Craig Condella questions what the iPod, with its digital files and constant 'outside-of-here-ness' [my words] mean for being, and challenges the critique of mobile devices by applying a Heideggerian lens. (Just when I thought I was done with Heidegger, he creeps up again.) He argues that technology is key. In fact, he states, "The question of being thus amounts to the qustion of how science and technology shape our entire worldview." We cannot escape it, try as we might to find ways to keep it out of the classroom, etc. However, we can ride it and use it to our advantage.

Some skills can be revised for the new worldview. For instance, although the iPod fills our ears with noise, making it difficult to be present in our world because we're in the world of our music, that can be a way to transcend the crowded, stress filled situations that wear us down. Sure, there is a danger that "modern technology becomes the new opiate of the masses," but it doesn't have to be. It's very possible that it can open us up rather than shut us down.

Ut-oh - school called, child sick...more on the white devil later.



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