Response to Reading - Week 1

In reading Postman’s article, “Of Luddites, Learning, and Life,” I found many of his questions and reflections to be ones that I have not wholly been able to answer myself. Yet. Postman’s writings successfully created questions in my mind that I, as a novice teacher, must work to find my own successful solutions to.

Postman says that “[machines] have nothing whatever to do with the fundamental problems we have to solve in schooling our young…because they are distractions.” This leads me to ask whether or not technology is a “distraction” that is worthy of our time. Are the technologies our districts are pushing taking much needed time away from the important part of schools, that being the student? Are they actually distractions? Many of the staff at my school would say yes.

Technology is something that I love and embrace, as well as find fairly easy to learn and adapt. However, when I look around at my many colleagues who struggle everyday to adapt themselves, as well as integrate technology into their day (let alone the children’s day) I can easily see how and why Postman refers to the push for technology in today’s school as a distraction, although I believe, for the most part, it isn't so.

After reading Postman’s article, and reflecting on the view of technology as a distraction, I jumped right into “Beyond Technology Integration: The Case for Technology Transformation,” by Reigeluth and Joseph. It was amazing to me, and thought provoking, to read these two articles back-to-back, as there is such a difference of opinion. It also astonished me to see how these two very different views so closely resemble the many ideas of my colleagues, as well as the constant discussions on technology integration that occur within our own small building, let alone within our district, and even the state and national level.

Reigeluth and Joseph’s discussion on “technology integration versus technology transformation” takes Postman’s view of technology as a distraction and tries to show that technology is only a distraction when we try to make it fit to our current way of teaching, instead of letting it transform both our way of teaching and our student’s ways of learning. This leads me to more questions that must be answered before I can become an effective educator. Is my current way of teaching an outdated and ineffective way to handle my student’s needs for an education that will prepare them for a technological world? How can I integrate technology to help them advance without distracting them from what is really important?

After all this, where does it leave me? I definitely agree with Reigeluth and Joseph’s opinion that “it is not an exaggeration to say that technology is indispensable for allowing us to transform teaching and learning to better meet our children’s needs in the information age,” but I also wholeheartedly believe that as an educator, I must be wary of how technology is helping as well as hindering my student’s growth, as well as my own, as we all strive to be life-long learners in a technological world.