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Why Bother?
The List
So, why bother?
The
short answer: Because
more people will be able to learn and teach better.
However, I hope the following list gives you hope
and justifies my own continuing optimism and enthusiasm more fully.
I really do believe it is all worth the effort!
The last, more
“visionary” section of this list may be the most important.
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WHY
BOTHER? THE LIST
Essential
Applications
A growing
number of courses include topics from fields in which applications of
information technology have become essential for doing important work
(e.g., CAD/CAM for architecture, GIS in geography and related subjects).
New
Instructional Capabilities
Topics can
now be taught and learned that were nearly impossible (or too dangerous)
to teach without the availability of new applications of information
technology (e.g., remote sound-graph analysis for teaching pronunciation
online; simulations of chemistry experiments in which expensive or
dangerous chemicals might be used).
Meeting
Varied Learning Needs, Preferences, Media
New
information technology tools enable a teacher to provide learners with
access to instructional materials that better match their individual
learning needs or preferences- without making extraordinary demands on
the teacher for preparatory time or special skills (e.g., capacity to
produce audio narration to accompany text and images and to make it all
simultaneously accessible on the Web).
Meeting
New Expectations
Many
students begin elementary school already familiar with computers and the
Internet at home. Even more
learners arrive at colleges, universities, and libraries with
expectations about access to uses of information technology that were
available in their secondary schools or in their workplace.
Newly hired young faculty often have higher expectations than
their predecessors about academic uses of technology.
Overcoming Difficult or Impossible Access
Telecommunications
can provide access to instruction that would otherwise be unavailable
due to learners' disabilities, inconvenient location, or schedule
restrictions.
Higher Expectations Based on Use of Productivity
Tools
As more
faculty and learners have access to productivity tools (e.g.,
Word-processing, Email, Web), teachers can provide more frequent
feedback, and students can make more frequent revisions when completing
assignments. Teachers can more reasonably demand higher quality
results.
Window to the Outside World
Using the
Web, computers, and projectors, faculty can bring into traditional
classrooms otherwise inaccessible resources (e.g., information, media,
people, events).
Information Literacy
The
exploding mess of information resources requires more sophisticated
skills for finding, selecting, manipulating, modifying, and distributing
information. Students (and faculty) need both more training and
more experience in using information resources and tools within the
academic environment as preparation for similar work elsewhere.
Collaborative
Learning
Email,
Web-based threaded discussion boards, and other tools more specifically
designed to support teamwork and group communication can enable students
to learn and work on projects together more easily.
Technology can support many of the “collaborative learning”
approaches already advocated by many faculty.
Career Necessity
Employers
expect employees to demonstrate comfort, confidence, and mastery of
basic skills related to the use of computers and telecommunications
options. While many students can acquire some of that
self-assurance and competence independently, many cannot. They
need access to the technology and training.
Narrowing the “Digital Divide”
There is an educational, social, and economic gap
between those who have frequent access to good quality information
technology resources and those who do not.
The significance and impact of this gap is growing.
Providing learners with access to information technology and to
introductory and compensatory training can help.
Competition
Institutional
ability to compete for students, faculty, and grants is dependent to
some degree on the apparent level of educational use of information
technology.
Widening
"Instructional Bottlenecks"
An
experienced teacher can recognize the improvement in student behavioral
patterns when a new instructional approach or new educational
application of information technology has removed or widened an
"instructional bottleneck."
Better
Communication, More “Time on Task”:
Better Learning
Educational
research confirms the obvious impression that students learn more and
better when they spend more time focused on work related to a course.
When email provides a convenient, attractive means of communicating with
other students in the course and with the instructor, many students are
observed to spend more time communicating about the subject matter –
and to learn more. The most surprising phenomenon may be the rise in
course-content-related communication between students and faculty AFTER
the completion of a course - when the students' grades are no longer
susceptible to change.
Anonymity
For some students, it is easier to express some of
their ideas anonymously. Email
and Web options can enable anonymous communications. This
can permit some students to participate more comfortably and frequently
in some course-related discussions.
Faculty can more easily obtain candid student responses about the
progress of a course or about students’ personal learning difficulties
when students can easily respond anonymously.
[Opportunities for anonymous comments must be carefully
structured to reduce the likelihood of cruel or vacuous comments.]
Renewed Energy
Teachers and students regain energy and enthusiasm
for their academic work as they find they can create new ways of
learning and thinking -- made possible by new applications of
information technology.
Accumulating Professional Judgment
A growing
mountain of informal statements from faculty members, students, and
others describing their conviction – based on experience – that
their own use of information technology improves the quality and
effectiveness of learning. Faculty members strongly resist giving
up educational uses of information technology that they believe have
demonstrably improved learning. "Anecdotal evidence"
reflecting the professional judgment of experienced teachers cannot be
dismissed.
[There
is room for more answers to “Why Bother?”]
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More
Visionary Answers to "Why Bother?"
-
So that we can
preserve what matters most while transforming what needs to change.
-
So that we can
develop and sustain deeper human connections and avoid drowning in a
flood of shallow communications.
-
So that
individual learners, teachers, and related support professionals can
connect better to information, ideas and each other via effective
combinations of pedagogy and technology - both old and new, on-campus
and online.
-
So that teachers,
learners and academic support professionals have access to adequate
RESOURCES and support services; and, consequently, they can believe in
their own ability to improve teaching and learning.
-
So that teachers,
learners and academic support professionals believe they share
RESPONSIBILITY for improving teaching and learning. But they know that
those with knowledge, experience, and wisdom - especially the faculty,
both individually and collectively -- retain the ultimate responsibility
for guiding learning.
-
So that everyone
can teach and everyone can learn throughout their lives, at least once
in a while. [“The best
way to learn a subject is to teach it.”
Learning by teaching is truly one of the most powerful ways of
learning.]
-
So that learners,
teachers, and academic support professionals can be well-prepared to
find, evaluate, select, and implement instructional options.
So that they also have frequent opportunities to exchange ideas
and information about academic content, skills, knowledge, and
understanding; and about educational and technological options; and
about communicating face-to-face, via telecommunications, and in all
media.
-
So that we can
find hope in learning and joy in teaching.
And,
finally:
"Information
technology can be the excuse and the means to move closer to educational
goals that we have been unable to achieve for decades - and to some new
ones. With enough commitment of resources, thoughtful effort, patience,
and luck, technology will help more than it hurts."
- excerpt from "A New Vision Worth Working Toward -- Connected
Education and Collaborative Change,"
February, 2000 version available at
WWW.TLTGROUP.ORG.
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