There was a lot of information shared this week and I again learned much. I wanted to post a bit of  Jaron Lanier’s article that I found particularly interesting.

Does the Digital Classroom Enfeeble the Mind?

By JARON LANIER

Published: September 16, 2010

“How can you be ambidextrous in the matter of technology and education? Education — in the broadest sense — does what genes can’t do. It forever filters and bequeaths memories, ideas, identities, cultures and technologies. Humans compute and transfer nongenetic information between generations, creating a longitudinal intelligence that is unlike anything else on Earth. The data links that hold the structure together in time swell rhythmically to the frequency of human regeneration. This is education.

Now we have information machines. The future of education in the digital age will be determined by our judgment of which aspects of the information we pass between generations can be represented in computers at all. If we try to represent something digitally when we actually can’t, we kill the romance and make some aspect of the human condition newly bland and absurd. If we romanticize information that shouldn’t be shielded from harsh calculations, we’ll suffer bad teachers and D.J.’s and their wares.”

What a great way to explain education and what a great challenge to all of us online educators to prepare our students to learn and understand the information we are trying to teach.  I think we have a great opportunity to help students understand information with the use of great online tools.  The ability we have to add video presentations gives us a chance to introduce information with our personal touch and give a little extra to the lesson plan.  Our students can also provide us with a video of their work so a presentation can be created to reveal their understanding of material, instead of just quoting from other informational sites.

A great reminder to all of us to engage, inspire and promote the learning process.  Simple repetition is not education.  Simple computations without understanding is not education.  We are challenged to bring our student’s experience to a higher level and provide an arena of growth.

I look forward to creating greater learning experiences and creating real understanding opportunities.  So I will just keep trying to be more ambidextrous and engaging.

I have included Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk about educational reform.  Hope you enjoy it.

Ted Talks