Connecting & Learning

Turkle and Wesch are very near and dear to my heart - in fact, after leading a class discussion on these two pieces in Dr. Bogad's class just last year, I feel as if they are sort of my friends. They just don't know it yet. Some of this is pulled from my thoughts (and blog) from that class, but a lot of it has been enhanced just by our conversations and learnings over that past four days. It's incredible how quickly learning happens when it's fun and meaningful and - oh, yeah...that entire list we put up on the board!

1. Wesch argues that, "most of us know from our own experience, the best learning almost always occurs in the absence of a teacher, for it is then that learners are free to pursue with great passion the questions that are meaningful and relevant to their own lives. Focusing on the quality of learning, rather than the quality of teaching, transforms the entire educational agenda." Our students learn by doing, not by taking diligent notes on long lectures and memorizing irrelevant facts. 

2. Turkle argues that in the midst of this "technological universe," we "need to remember - in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts - to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another." These are the moments in which we allow ourselves to be human, have feelings and reactions and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. They allow us to be present in the moment.

Neither Wesch nor Turkle hate technology; rather, they are trying to figure out (like the rest of us) how technology best fits into our worlds and our classrooms. I see them as allies, working from the same camp, trying to bridge the meaningful and relevant pieces of our lives with the technological pieces of the world that are everywhere around us. For Turkle, this means learning how to have real conversations, and possessing the ability to look up from our phones and do life with one another. For Wesch, it means understanding the capabilities and limitlessness of our technology and valuing the connections we can make through that technology.

I think we do need to have a lot of conversations with our students (and teach them how to have these conversations) about racism, sexism, social injustices, as well as conversations about their day, their opinions, their feelings. I also think that we need to get comfortable with technology in our classrooms, especially as a way to enhance, not our teaching, but student learning. There are so many opportunities for our students to be connected to information, ideas and other students that they might not have had the opportunity to be connected to before. So why are we (or our administrators or our school districts) shying away from this? Wesch argues that "we are all interconnected" and that we should provide for our students the opportunity for an "important and meaningful exploration of the world in which we live and co-create." We have to find a way to use technology with our students, so that we all may learn from it.

In his TED Talk, by posing a unique analogy, Todd Rose asks educators a question that Turkle and Wesch (along with us, too!) would have several cups of coffee over as he discusses flexible learning environments created by technology...."So the question isn't 'do you want the technology?' - it's already here, you've already paid for it - the question is, 'what do you want it to be?'" 

What DO we want technology to be? How will we make it become that? How can we best incorporate it into our daily lives, in order to enhance the conversations and questions our students voice? Like Kelly Reed brought up yesterday, technology is simply a tool, like the physical tools that we got to play around with and cut and glue and create. Let's work on making it a part of learning.