Education and technology

As I read my classmates comments on Education as Marketplace I wanted to jump in and add to their comments. But blogging doesn’t allow that and I haven’t made time to learn how to use the new tools. Wow! It’s incredible how we criticized the “traditionalist” system. Don’t take me wrong; I have a whole bunch of other criticisms as well. As you see, I could not stop myself and had to blog about it.

Where do we go from here? Now that we know why education has been shaped to form “Lemmings” (http://dmayne.blogspot.com/), which look like robots and follow orders without questioning anything, what can we do? Now that we are starting to get passed the industrialization era, in need of “thinkers, not just workers” [italics added by the author] (http://edtech6931.blogspot.com/), can we reshape the educational system? Christy gave some solutions. She talked about the importance of learning a second language, music and art education, as well as other courses that have been eliminated of school curriculum in order to reduce costs (http://froglady0317.blogspot.com), because of lower educational budgets, or because as Vanessa said, money has been redirected to buy technological tools.

Even more, Vanessa quoted Besser (1993) saying, “without computers we, our children, and our country will fall behind others …” (p. 61). It’s interesting because international studies already puts American students behind many other countries. For example, the International Mathematics and Science Assessments: What Have We Learned? summarizes findings of three international studies conducted in 1960, 1980, and 1988. (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs92/web/92011.asp); and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (1999) is summarized and compared to the second international exam (1988) in the report Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (http://nces.ed.gov/timss/highlights.asp).

Its somehow interesting that on the homepage for this website, there is a bar graph that compares the average of students’ access to computers at home. American students have on average an 80% access to computers at home, while international students have on average only a 45% access. This, I believe could be considered evidence that having more computers does not imply students will learn more.

Another report that should be examine is Education and the Labor Force which most probably will add to the discussion we had in class last Wednesday night (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/IntlIndicators/index.asp?SectionNumber=5) -- more on this latter.

To conclude, there is no magical solution to the education question. The impact economics have over the government and therefore over education is very strong. At the end it seems a matter of priorities, one that has been described in terms of philosophies and theories of education. Do we want our students to think by themselves and find solutions to the problems they as a group encounter? Or, do we want the students to follow the rule as “lemmings” without questioning what they are given, behaving beautifully, but rarely contributing to social growth?

A technology tool that still is in its developmental stage: The electronic car

Why is it that we adopt certain technological tools, but do not take others, leaving them behind? Some may argue marketing was not good enough or similar competing products were able to better capture the attention of the market. But sometimes although the idea could be good, the technological advances needed to make a product desirable are not available yet. I believe this was the case of the electronic car in the 1970’s. If you can drive at 50 miles per hour or more, would you buy a car that can only go 30 miles an hour? Probably not, once you get used to the speed, you would like to get to your destination as soon as possible.

Maybe the most important thing about electronic cars is the clean ecological impact it has, reducing pollution and emissions, and having no oil consumption. For this to be of great importance to people, there has to be a high level of consciousness, one that sadly enough I think too few has. A society based on appearance, highly consumerist, might not think of the goodness of a product, but mainly on how good and popular it looks.

So, to try to answer some of Vanessa’s questions (http://edtech6931.blogspot.com/) about Callon’s article, I think this article is an example of a technological tool in process, one that has not been adapted because it still needs further development. I went to Google.com and search for “electronic car”. I was able to find several new options: trucks, shuttles, trailers, trams, and cars. These have increased the speed to about 80 miles per hour, but are still extremely expensive. Only those with a very good income and high consciousness would be willing to pay more than $30,000 for a car. (Well, …).

Electric cars.com reports:

Electric cars are being developed by major auto manufacturers like BMW, Ford, Lexus, Dodge, Acura, Peugeot, GM, Mercedes Benz, Honda, and Toyota. There are also more than 100 smaller companies developing economical, fun to drive electric vehicles (http://www.electriccars.com/tour/autoshow.cfm)

So, as you can see there is a big probability that electric cars will become popular. Because they are still in a stage of development, somehow like the airplane industry once was, they might not seem that important now. But once they are comparable to the cars we are used to, they might become more available and more affordable.

References:

Callon, M. (1987). Society in the making: The study of technology as a tool for sociological analysis. In bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P. and Pinch, T. J. (Eds.) The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology (83-103). MA: MIT Press.

Electric cars.com. (n.d.) Retrieved October 15, 2003, from http://www.electriccars.com/.

Electric Vehicles International: Power in motion. (n.d.) Retrieved October 15, 2003, from http://www.evi-usa.com.