Chapters in Section V identify trends and issues in IDT in various contexts: business & industry; military; health care education; P-12 education; and post-secondary education. Select at least 3 of these 5 contexts and compare/contrast the IDT trends and issues. Then explain how they are similar or different from the IDT trends and issues in the context in which you work.
With the Health care education sector it seems that technology has become more of a real-time practice. In our modern day, when a person has an x-ray for whatever reason and partnered with the technology that is around, doctors and radiologists can see results and confer with each other almost instantly instead of waiting an hour or more for the film to be processed. Surgeries have also become much less evasive and more precise as the result of new technology. When I had my hysterectomy a few years back the doctors had technology available that made my incision from being hip to hip to 3 small one inch incisions. This makes recover time quicker, cuts cost on the hospital stay and reduces the pain involved.
With P-12 education it seems that technology is forging its way through into the education process by students having on to one device access. In addition, textbooks are becoming accessible through technology and can be revised, edited and updated overnight instead of over several years at an expensive burden to districts. Some teachers have even embraced technology by using it for quick, real time communication with students and parents. The drawback is that education, in general, tends to hesitate to embrace technology, as educators I feel that we want to test drive technology before we truly depend on it as viable to student learning.
Post-secondary education, for the most part, has embraced technology. I have seen web-seminars, podcast, and links to outside video and colleges who offer on line classes in place of the traditional face-to-face classes as a medium of teaching. These methods bring far more resources into the classroom and with the technology available more people can access higher education while being flexible in meeting time compared to a face to face setting.
The similarities between, heath care, P-12 education and Post-secondary education and where I work is that technology seems to have hasted the pace while being able to teach using a wider range of resources become available.
Chapters in Section VI discuss global trends and issues in IDT. As the world’s population grows exponentially, we face unprecedented challenges that have implications for learning. How and can we prepare our youth to address the problems of living in a world with 9 billion people when the earth’s resources cannot sustain that many? Does our current education system, curriculum, and instructional practices help learners foster the complex problem-solving skills necessary to tackle these issues? Are there methods and practices used in European and Asian countries that we should use here in the US? Why or why not?
We can prepare our youth to address problems of living in a
world where resources cannot sustain the population by having a clear vision of
what is needed to be learned and by having a plan in place, and staying
committed to the plan. I believe that teachers
do not allow our primary aged students to problem-solve independently. I see teachers, for many different reasons,
enabling students by solving problems for them or by not allowing them to have a
safe environment in order to fail and thus hindering the student’s ability to
problem solve and learn from mistakes. I
think that the US could learn from other countries different techniques and
expectations for learning and implement them in a way that is appropriate for
us. Europeans take a more traditional
learning modality of lecture and listen and Japan and Korea take a more
technology learning style. I feel that
there is a balance that needs to be reached between different styles. No one method used as a totality will be the
most effective. I feel that learning by using
both a traditional and technological modes and integrating those modes to fit
our needs will be the best solution.
Steffanye,
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful name first of all. It sounds like European, I love the spelling also.
I am prone to facilitate technology in my classes, by nature, I think :). I see how students transform when technology is incorporated in to the learning.
I download text books, I download books for my students as much as I can. With the book "in the computer", as my elementary behavior students tell me, learning is easy. Books are so heavy, very bulky, coarse, to handle. Easy to read them "in the computer".
I also want them to feel the book, feel the heavy load, that is what it is. We have to feel all that to feel the learning. Or I may just be too old fashion. We carried our books in bags on hand not even on our back or shoulder. I do not want my students to do that. We are in a different world, if they stay behind in technology they will just stay behind.
I would like to see smaller text books with a link to where to go read more information about the subjects. Mandatory of course, when the link opens to guide them to school work and home work to complete the learning not in the book.
In European countries, the technology is so expensive, mostly untouchable. My cousin had to buy a specific laptop, for her daughter entering the Architecture field in the University of Thessaloniki, - love to write that - to fit the requirements. When we looked here for the same one we found a substantial bigger hard drive, RAM and graphic card with half of the money. Just an example.
Steffanye,
ReplyDeleteit stuck with me when you said that we need to plan and have a clear vision about what we want our youth to learn to fix the problems that they will have as grown ups. I think it stuck because we all know what the problem is, but even we are too slow to react to what is happening now. So how can we expect our youth to know exactly what to do when the time comes that they are in charge? We should make that clear path and pass it on to them to continue to improve up on it, not just hand them our problems. I also liked that you said that we should let our students fail. I really think that failing helps you to be a better problem solver. In my classroom if a student answers a question wrong, I bring it up to their attention and ask them to correct it on their own. That way they can learn how to self-correct.
-Adriana Chapa
Steffayne,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your position that post-secondary education has embraced technology. Working in the University setting as a media specialist, I assist the professors in acquiring the proper equipment to make the webinars and podcast. The demand for equipment has doubled over the past 2 years. I think one of the biggest challenges we face in education is the amount of information we have access too is so large and available at the click of a button. Somehow the student of this generation has lost the ability to problem solve without the assistance of an electronic device. I am concerned that somehow we are getting away from the foundation skills. When I speak to incoming freshmen about library services, I can almost tell you what part of the country they are from. The rural students come to the University and some have ad very limited access to computers and electronic devices, then on the flip side I get students from the big cities on the east and west coast and they are bored with simple instruction and they have very little common sense. I think IDT has to evolve as the culture of the learners evolves.
` Mary Freeman