I'm going to stop for a moment with my tale and digress a bit. Last week I received a call from above reminding me that I am supposed to spread the word about my thoughts on educational technology. Well, in a way or another, I've been alway involved with computers and education, and sometimes both of them together... This semester in particular, I'm more involved with the topic, taking classes on it and making myself visible on the web.
It's funny to think that my final project of my computer science undergraduate degree (finished more than 10 years ago) was a multimedia tool for classroom presentation. Well, that never flew. After going to completely different fields for several years, here I am, interested in... multimedia tools for classroom presentation... The only difference is that I'm no longer programming their underlying code, but using prepackaged applications. My exploration now is on the many uses of technology in classroom from a cognitive and educational perspective.
Although there are several tools that can be used by themselves for classroom presentations (ppt being the current almighty first choice), there is a converging tendency toward on-line interconnectivity. Standalone presentations can be upload to the web, in any format, and be seen by millions. Necessary resources can be download from the web to be used in isolated presentations. The Web 2.0 is allowing ideas to become closer; integrated in various ways. However, besides ideas, are their authors also becoming closer? Are such connections made among people, or among parts of people? It seems like at the same time information is becoming more connected and cohesive, the individual is becoming fragmented. The parts of this person are scattered in different web sites, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, chat rooms, and so on. Interestingly, one place in which these parts are reconnecting into a new whole is on Second Life. It seems like we need to deconstruct ourselves before being reborn from the ashes. The irony is that such new whole is virtual. In the process of deconstruction, the body can be discarded, and a new, improved (?) one created in this no longer imaginary world.
But why all this blabbing? First, because I wanted to. My fragment in this blog still has agency. Second, and moving back to the classroom, because this makes us think about the new interpersonal dynamics in this learning environment. Are teachers still teachers or are they facilitators? How do students interact among themselves? Some (instructors and students) still refrain from embracing the technology, while others can only be found virtually. It is within ed. tech. that we try to understand and tame this colossal entity, but at the end, we are still at its mercy, and we are the ones who end up tamed.
