Rheingold discussed the ways people use participatory media and collective activities to collaborate. Rheingold talked about the collaboration of various group throughout times. He also talked about the prisoner dilemma and how each individual did not want to compromise based or his/her perspective of being cheated even though they did not know each other. The social dilemma educators are faced with today is closing the great digital divide and therefore enhancing the learning for all our students. Rheingold also discuss the new emergent of technology and it uses in the new era as a learning tool. The global implication of the use of computer will be the catalyst to linking educators/ students with other educators/students all over the globe.
Getting back to Rheingold, the prisoner dilemma also exists amongst educators. Susana Juniu article on Digital Democracy in Higher Education: Bridging the Digital Divide, she discussed the perspective of using technology in the classroom by three different groups of educators. In her discussion she identified three groups. One group felt that technology alone would not enhance or change education. For this group, "technical information is not true wisdom" (Mitcham 1990). They believe that hardware alone would not enhance students learning. For them, incorporating instructional changes, fostering students' critical thinking skills, and possessing strong constructivist pedagogies must always be a prerequisites for the use of computer technology in instruction. For this group, in short, questions of pedagogy must always precede questions of technological integration.
Another group of educators believes that computers can engage and motivate students to learn more, and thus it advocates the use of technology within the classroom. For this group, pedagogical principles are not necessarily irrelevant, but they are less sharply defined at the outset such that the educators in this group are more willing to modify their teaching strategies with different tools in different circumstances. This group of faculty users corresponds to Milliron and Miles's notion of the "reasoned center" (2000).
A third group views technology as the key answer to the problems in education and an indispensable means of school transformation and reform. These "techno-promoters" usually believe that students learn faster, better, and more extensively with computers (Cuban 2001).
From a constructivist perspective, technology such as the Internet and World Wide Web would facilitate instructional goals, conditions of learning, and method of instruction. Reasoning and critical thinking could be facilitated through microworlds, problem-based learning. And cognitive flexibility (which produces multiple perspectives and multiple modes of learning) could be facilitated through utilizing hypermedia (Driscoll, 2005, p. 402).
What would be the paid off if educators participated in collaboration and a collective educational community using technology as a catalyst to improve learning across our nation.
References:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.htmlCuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Juniu, S. (2005). Digital democracy in higher education: Bridging the digital divide. Published in Innovate,
http://www.innovateonline.info/Mitcham, C. (1990). Three ways of being with technology. In From artifact to habitat: Studies in the critical engagement of technology, ed. G. Ormiston, 31-59. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press.
Milliron, D. & Miles, C. L. (2000). Education in a digital democracy. EDUCAUSE Review November-December): 50-62.
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