In the article, “Integrating Educational Technology without Annihilating Nature,” by R.W. Burniske, a weeklong series of online and face-to-face learning activities were used on selected students, in hopes that they would acquire a greater understanding and appreciation of nature, while exploring the importance of education and technology in their lives.
Burniske is concerned that online learning offers the promise of an explicit curriculum that takes the learners to another time and place; however, it potentially neglects students from their immediate surroundings. Students are becoming more interested in technology than being aware of what’s in their own back yard. Therefore, we have to be aware of the ethical concerns that attend the integration of information and communication technologies.
One technique Burniske suggests for teaching with technology is to create learning activities that pay attention to immediate, real world places, events and creatures while integrating technology for learning about distant places, events and creatures. Teachers must strive for balance between computer-assisted and real world learning and help students examine the relationship between education, technology and nature.
Students need the guidance of thoughtful teachers who will help them focus on their immediate surroundings and examine the connections between education, technology and nature. Ultimately, the integration of educational technology will be a difficult and impossible achievement unless it teaches students the significance of using new tools in a responsible and ethical fashion.
-Is it possible to integrate technology and introduce the process of globalization without annihilating a child's connection with the natural world?
-Ultimately, how might education help preserve nature while introducing networked technology to the classroom for teaching and learning about globalization?
Integration of Technology in the Classroom
Keeping Nature in the Classroom
Technology versus Nature
Burniske is concerned that online learning offers the promise of an explicit curriculum that takes the learners to another time and place; however, it potentially neglects students from their immediate surroundings. Students are becoming more interested in technology than being aware of what’s in their own back yard. Therefore, we have to be aware of the ethical concerns that attend the integration of information and communication technologies.
One technique Burniske suggests for teaching with technology is to create learning activities that pay attention to immediate, real world places, events and creatures while integrating technology for learning about distant places, events and creatures. Teachers must strive for balance between computer-assisted and real world learning and help students examine the relationship between education, technology and nature.
Students need the guidance of thoughtful teachers who will help them focus on their immediate surroundings and examine the connections between education, technology and nature. Ultimately, the integration of educational technology will be a difficult and impossible achievement unless it teaches students the significance of using new tools in a responsible and ethical fashion.
-Is it possible to integrate technology and introduce the process of globalization without annihilating a child's connection with the natural world?
-Ultimately, how might education help preserve nature while introducing networked technology to the classroom for teaching and learning about globalization?
Integration of Technology in the Classroom
Keeping Nature in the Classroom
Technology versus Nature
Jessica Sheng
2 comments:
This is a good question, and as the world "shrinks" with the increase of modes of international communication, and the decrease of cost of them, we will increasingly need to fight the pull to avoid people in our lives who we don't want to deal with for whatever reason.
I think that one thing educators can do to help children is to model and encourage students to make the tangible human beings in their lives a priority. Their family and friends, and emphasize the potential growth and enrichment that is available by dealing with people that are not exactly like you or may not make you feel like the most important person in the world.
The biggest threat of the internet is escapism: that students will use it to escape realtional and personal problems rather than dealing with them. We need to primarily model it though!!
Tawmis, you raise an interesting point. Students seem to think that they can escape into another world when using the internet but we should try to focus they attention to facing their problems in real life. It seems that people know more about other places and events in far off countries than what is happening in their own backyard.
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