Interesting post Jim as you mention a few points I'd like to comment on. "Technology is only an extension of the clay tablets of the past. All they do is to provide a place where information is stored, and those that use that information – confidence and control."
Although technology can be "a place where information is stored", I think it goes beyond that. At one level, a power law distribution is at play in that a small number of people control the majority of information (e.g., wikipedia). But more importantly, those of us along the "right tale" also exhibit a level of control when we form subgroups (i.e., social networking groups)and pursue common interests through the virtual interaction with others. That is, primary school teachers have at their disposal a variety of means for showing control, power, and confidence through the use of technology, namely the Internet (e.g., blogs, wikis, etc.). I don´t think it's even necessary that the educational community understand or recognize this affordance. Once primary school teachers take it upon themselves to exercise their control and power through the exchange of information with others - thus gaining knowledge - teacher trainers for example might become more inclined to see the authority potential teachers have. Yes, ideally, teacher trainers ought to empower and grant authority to teachers based on ability as opposed to title; indeed fostering confidence and control within the educational system is to everyone's advantage. But it doesn't necessarily have to begin with the educational community, but rather the teachers themselves. "...what terms are associated with primary school teachers?" Unlike businesses and science, learning is not quite as cut-and-dry. I look at learning more as an emergent phenomenon, based more on chaos theory. It is difficult, if not impossible, to generalize what learning is or how it is best achieved across a variety of contexts that exist. But if I had to associate terms to education, it would be words like "growth" or "development" which ultimately deal with the question: "What is it to be someone?" (i.e., bringing more of an ontological stance to education instead of solely an epistemological one). If one considers the way people currently interpret, interact, and produce information through the use of technology compared to how information was interpreted, interacted with, and produced through the use of clay tablets, perhaps technology is a little more than "an extension of the clay tablets of the past". How do others feel on the matter? Benjamin http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Bnleez On Sep 6, 1:49 pm, jkelly952 <[email protected]> wrote: > Technology is only an extension of the clay tablets of the past. All > they do is to provide a place where information is stored, and those > that use that information – confidence and control. The business > community and “recently” the scientific community have and are > becoming very successful in understanding this. For some reason the > education community (publishers and teacher trainers) don't seem to > understand what a successful primary school teacher (like a business > person or scientist) needs to have is confidence and control. A > business person knows terms like “profit and loss” a scientist > “hypothesis and conclusion” as their education prepared them for it; > but what terms are associated with primary school teachers (teachers > in general) ? Where is the information base that builds confidence > and control? > > jim kellyhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Jkelly952 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
