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What impact, if any, is the use of computers and other digital technologies having on the learning process of todays student? To what extent or degree are we as teachers responsible, or should be responsible, for the proper integration of technology into our classrooms? Research and inquiry into this realm have proposed both positive and negative aspects to computer versus traditional learning. There are, without question, cultural and educational benefits and dangers of technology and computer usage for students. As educators, we have a significant role to play in ensuring equal access to technology, and in realizing its full educational and creative potential. Public debate about the impact of new digital technologies have been marked by a kind of schizophrenia which often accompanies the advent of new cultural forms.
On the one hand, these new forms are seen to have enormous positive potential, particularly for learning; on the other, they are frequently seen to be harmful to those who are regarded as particularly vulnerable. In both cases, it is children - or perhaps more accurately, the idea of childhood - which is the vehicle for many of these aspirations and concerns. This was certainly apparent in the early years of television. Amid current fears about the impact of television violence, it is interesting to recall that television was initially promoted to parents as an educational medium.
Likewise, in the 1950 s and 1960 s, television and other new electronic technologies were widely seen to embody the future of education: they were described as teaching machines. Even here, however, hopes of a utopian future were often balanced against fears of loss and cultural decline. Television was seen both as a new way of bringing the family together, and as something which would undermine natural family interaction. The medium was extolled as a means of nurturing childrens emotional and educational development, and simultaneously condemned for taking them away from more wholesome or worthwhile This kind of schizophrenia is also apparent in contemporary responses to digital technology. On the one hand, there is a form of visionary utopianism, particularly among educationists. Seymour Paper, the inventor of logo programming language, for example, argues that computers bring about new forms of learning, which transcend the limitations of older methods, particularly linear methods such as print and television (Paper, 1993).
It is children who are seen to be most responsive to these new approaches: the computer somehow releases their natural creativity and desire to learn, which are blocked and frustrated by old- fashioned methods. According to Paper, the computer is the childrens machine. Such utopianism is also increasingly popular in the area of literacy. Some writers, for example argue that digital technology will bring about a new form of democratic literacy.
It will bring the means of expression and communication within everyones reach, and thereby enfranchise the public imagination in genuinely new ways. This leads in turn to what might be called a form of political utopianism. Jon Katz (1996), for instance, regards the Internet as a means of childrens liberation: it provides children with opportunities to escape from adult control, and to create their own cultures and communities. For the first time, he argues, children can reach past the suffocating boundaries of social conventions, past their elders rigid notions of what is good for them. It is children, according to Katz, who will lead the This utopian view forges a connection between a particular mythological construction of childhood and a parallel mythology about technology, which is powerfully reflected in advertising for computers. Ads for Apple Macs or Microsoft work hard to counter popular views of technology as somehow unnatural or inhuman, and therefore threatening.
They often focus not on the scientific specifications, but on the magical promise of the technology: the computer is represented here as a window onto new worlds, a way of developing childrens intuitive sense of wonder and their thirst for knowledge. In this respect, there are striking parallels between the new age utopianism of some academic writing about computers and the rhetoric of the sales pitch. What is perhaps more disturbing is how these arguments have been taken up by politicians and policy-makers. Representatives of all the main political parties now frequently suggest that the information superhighway will offer a solution to all the problems of contemporary schooling - as though this technology would bring about learning in and of itself. (The Clinton administration has been advocating the National Information Infrastructure arguing that computer-based instruction is cost-effective, enabling 30 % more learning in 40 % less time at 30 % less cost (Tapscott, 1996). ) On the other hand, however, there is a much more negative account of the impact of digital technologies on childrens lives.
This account focuses not on their educational potential, but on their role as a medium of entertainment - and it depends upon making an absolute distinction between the two. Some of the anxieties that are regularly rehearsed in relation to television now appear to have been carried over to this new medium. As with television, the range of concerns evoked here is very broad. Thus, digital media are frequently seen to be a bad influence on childrens behavior - and particularly to cause imitative violence.
Thus, it is argued, the more realistic graphic effects become, the more likely they are to encourage copycat behavior. These technologies are also seen to be bad for your brain - and indeed for your body. There have been numerous clinical studies of phenomena such as Nintendo elbow and epileptic fits allegedly caused by computer games, through to research on computer addiction, and its negative effects on imagination and academic achievement. The technologies are also seen to be bad for your social life: they apparently cause people to become anti-social, destroying normal human interaction and family life. Young people come to prefer the distance and anonymity of virtual communication to the reality of face-to-face interaction.
Finally, digital media are also seen to be bad for your politics and for your morality. Games playing is seen to be a highly gendered activity, which reinforces traditional stereotypes and negative role models; while concern about the accessibility of pornography on the Internet is These arguments, like those about the effects of television, often involve a form of scapegoating. Like television, the computer becomes a convenient bad object onto which we can dump our worries and frustrations - whether they are about violence or immorality or commercialism or sexism or the demise of traditional notions of childhood and family life. As with other screen-based media, at least some of this concern is expressed in the call for stricter legislation, although it also leads to the view that parents and teachers should be exercising greater control in order to protect children from such apparently corrupting influences. While I would not wish to dismiss such concerns - nor indeed to deny the enormous potential of these technologies - these apparently contrasting positions do share similar weaknesses. As with debates around television, both positive and negative arguments draw upon more general beliefs about childhood -...
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Research essay sample on Positive And Negative Digital Technology
