LTDC Online News

Dr W. Gardner Campbell – Baylor University

Wants to out some ideas – some are brand new

Book : The Nature of Technology by Brian Arthur

Think about technology we think of iphone, netbook,

Need to think about technology in the broad sense -

Tree definitions:

• A means to fulfill a human purpose
• A collection of technologies
• “technium” the ecology of technologies in our world

We can be mislead by stories about technology.  Think more broadly about what a ‘technology’ is – spinning wheel, yarn, clothes, eyeglasses.

Argument:

• Technology uses a natural phenomena “for some purpose” – Arthur
• School is a technology that uses out brain’s natural phenomenon of wanting to learn
• The purpose of school is faster and better learning – Faster:more in one lifetime & Better:that one can learn more effectively

The building is a technology; the classroom is a technology; a curriculum is a technology;

What other schooling technologies?

• Credit hour (If we award degrees based on credit hours, we might be accessing at the wrong end of the student!)
• GPA
• Course
• Semester
• Examination
• “Year” (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior)
• Transcript
• Faculty (A means to serve a human purpose – a set of scholars who choose to live together to share their work)

Are our schools a ‘pill box’ or a cattle trough?

Look at what the printing press did for us. How disruptive it was.

Two kinds of technology – quote from Arthur “To have no technology is to be not-human. …”

Which technologies extend our nature?

Three recursive practices of education:

• Narrating – story telling
• Curating – assembly them, ‘curate’ them – which things go where and how to preserve
• Sharing – how to share
• Network effects are most powerful on the open web using Web 2.0 affordances

WEB 2.0

• Read/write web: user-generated content
• Perpetual beta
• the long tail
• Networks effects

WEB 2.0: Emotional layer

• Intimacy
• Authenticity – ‘escape the spin’ – find something ‘real’
• Creativity
• Emergence – the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

courseblogs.gardnercampbell.net to see examples of blogs of collaboration of the students

Using the technology to have the students understand that learning is fluid and life long.