Emerging Technology for Adult Education
The image above references both the sense of emerging technology like plant shoots pushing out of the ground and also a witty video called Ode to Pencil Chat. The video uses some of the arguments made against the use of the new technologies in the clasroom, but aims them instead at the use of pencils.
I'm not arguing that the new technologies available to us today are inherently good or bad, my point is that these technologies are tools and it is up to us to figure out how to use them well, in ways that deepen and broaden our teaching and learning experiences. But we should be afraid to try new things, play around with technology tools.
This website includes information aobut some emerging technologies that seem particularly promising for the adult education field. The tools are free or inexpensive, support bringing the real world in to the classroom and lessons from class into the real world. The tools can be used by teachers and also by students.
It is certainly a simplification and you can read a deeper description here, but the Greek philosopher, Socrates, was not at all happy about writing and felt that it was the enemy of memory. We now live in a time when the new technology tools are about information. It is not strange then that teachers, who deal largely with how people access, use, and remember information, may have strong negative feelings and fears about what these information technologies are doing to how we know things were when we were students. We all lament the apparent disappearance of good penmanship and I certainly know very few phone numbers by heart anymore. I am not denying that people use information technologies in unwise, unhealthy, destructive ways, but the point of this website is not so much to look at is change bad, but rather for us to spend some time looking and how change can be good; how can emerging technologies can benefit us.
This website includes information aobut some emerging technologies that seem particularly promising for the adult education field. The tools are free or inexpensive, support bringing the real world in to the classroom and lessons from class into the real world. The tools can be used by teachers and also by students.
It is certainly a simplification and you can read a deeper description here, but the Greek philosopher, Socrates, was not at all happy about writing and felt that it was the enemy of memory. We now live in a time when the new technology tools are about information. It is not strange then that teachers, who deal largely with how people access, use, and remember information, may have strong negative feelings and fears about what these information technologies are doing to how we know things were when we were students. We all lament the apparent disappearance of good penmanship and I certainly know very few phone numbers by heart anymore. I am not denying that people use information technologies in unwise, unhealthy, destructive ways, but the point of this website is not so much to look at is change bad, but rather for us to spend some time looking and how change can be good; how can emerging technologies can benefit us.
