We've Got the Technology

Personal Author:
Aronson, Marc
Journal Name:
School Library Journal
Source:
School Library Journal v. 54 no. 12 (December 2008)
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.libproxy.chapman.edu:2048/hww/results/getResults.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/results/results_common.jhtml.21

"We are 20th-century teachers using 19thcentury methods to reach 21st-century students."
The writer, suggests that the educational system is more likely to see the old and the new overlapping and blending than a total transformation, for the teachers who had enough experience working with all kind of technology e.g. video games, computers and many new education models, come and go, need to stop and questions whether this paradigm shift is realistic, and whether educators can bridge the huge gap.
The writer brought some real experiences form his friends teacher at a recent educational technology conference she addressed almost everybody talking about the importance of the abundance of the traditional scarcity model, where students are shown how to find information, and embrace an excess model -- one in which young people are trained to select from among many competing resources and craft their own narratives. But does this radical transformation reflect the reality of today's schools? Most of the old educator and the new are likely to overlap and blend, not suddenly displace each other. Doesn't that make sense? Doesn't that sound more realistic than a vision of a completely transformed educational system?
For the literate classes liked having a difficult, traditional, native-born written language. They liked that more than they craved ease, modernity, or convenience in dealing with foreigners. And that bring them back to schools, technology, students, and change. The fact that technology makes new kinds of educational opportunities possible doesn't imply that teachers, administrators, school boards, and college admittance personnel -- not to mention students and parents -- want, or even need, those new methods.