Technology is a good thing. Airplanes fly, e-mail doesn’t require a stamp, and finding information doesn’t require a trip to the library (or even the bookshelf) because of the internet and the computer. In education the move to technology has also brought many improvements and benefits to older ways of doing things (I would not have completed a masters thesis if not for the modern word processor as a typewriter would have driven me mad). There are downsides to technology though.
Oftentimes digital presentation software will replace the skill of speaking (both for teacher lectures and student presentations). When I was in grade school the greatest sin one could commit was present their poster in multi-colored markers and use the color yellow against the shiny white background. It was unreadable. Today one of the greatest sins is often a digital version of this color abuse coupled with reading a presentation directly from the screen.
There is also a move to digital learning environments. I’ve talked about the futuristic experience of talking to family via video chat in my fatherhood blog but this is a reality in some learning institutions. Last semester I took a course with a professor who taught via video chat because he had to be elsewhere for health reasons. This is a benefit and the course worked because of the specific nature of the course. Sometimes, though, technology in the classroom is even less personal. Perhaps you have a “conversation” with other students on message boards without ever having real-time discussions. Perhaps you are evaluated only by multiple choice questions and/or your reading is on the computer. This process feels cold to me.
Call me a traditionalist but I like teachers. I like seeing their faces, asking them questions, visiting them during office hours, and getting a smiley face sticker or a star on my paper when it is returned to me (and yes… this has happened in my Doctoral program). For all of the benefit of technology the human element is lost. As a person involved in the theatre, where real people perform in real-time in the same place as you actually are, I tend to value the human element quite a bit. Is education losing the human element?