The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Some Reflexions onthe Critical Impacts of ICT

upon Education and Society

Michel AubéUniversité de Sherbrooke

maube@courrier.usherb.ca

Specialists within ICT have introduced an interesting concept, «technological watchfulness»”, which relies on a constant awareness towards whatever comes up, so as not to be blinded or restrained by today ’s possibilities. As for teachers, perhaps they should rather practice some kind of cultural, sociological, pedagogical et didactical «watchfulness», so as to understand what tomorrow ’s schools, public and programs will be made of. And if there is some time left, then indeed paying some attention to what is played on the ICT scene would be welcome.

Perrenoud, P. (1998) : Se servir des technologies nouvelleshttp://www.ac-grenoble.fr/stismier/nullpart/divers/perrenou9.htm

1. Advantages and possibilities2. Problems to deal with3. Serious dangers to avoid4. Hints for solutions

a- A much larger accessibility to knowledge

- on-line access via Internet to various DB (advantageous for countries with scarce libraries)

- electronic atlas, encyclopedia, dictionaries

- powerful research engines (sometimes even personalized filters)

- e-mail and easy access to scientific communities

1. Advantages and possibilities

1. Advantages and possibilities

b- New production tools

- desktop processing (graphics, texts, DB)

- possibility of “picking up” things on the Web (but raises complex ethical problems )

- expert systems and tools to support diagnosis

c- New powerful concepts for learning and education

- programming, representation, bugs

- data search et problem solving

- ideas issued from «hyperlinking» and networking

- multiplicity of access pathways

d- Support for collaborative learning

- distributing problems over many heads

- multiplying viewpoints

- enlarging data gathering

- positive interdependence (responsability and commitment involved)

- easy access to distant experts

1. Advantages and possibilities

e- Motivation issued from novelty

- temporary attractiveness of new tools (but doesn’t last for long)

- variety and diversity of form and contents

- expounded possibilities for explorations, stimulating imagination and creativity

- shortened delays and increased efficiency in obtaining proper answers to questions

1. Advantages and possibilities

a- Reorganizing classroom topology and ecology

- modifying worktime, agendas and schedules (for kids as well as for teachers)

- choosing between individual vs collective teaching

- modifying discipline and classroom management

b- Reorganizing contents and curricula

- from now on, what to count as basics?

- local vs governmental programs?

- handbooks or exercise-books or CD or web sites?

- new teachers’ training desperately required

2. Problems to deal with

2. Problems to deal with

c- «Virtual realities»

- appealing for simulations but yet not many interesting applications without heavy costs

- «disconnection» problem (cf astronomical software and database)

- validation problems (cf Weizembaum)

- loosening of critical sense

- loosening of «verification habits» (cf electronic calculators vs mental calculationl)

d- Largely widening most social gaps

- vs socio-economics disparities (access to the tools)

- vs learning disabilities

- vs some behaviour problems

- between boys and girls

- between Northern and Southern countries

e- Cultural levelling

- devalorization of differences

- uniformization of thinking modes

- standardization of communication protocols

2. Problems to deal with

Internet universally accessible?Well, perhaps not so...

a- Risks concerning technological dependency

- because of the costs (low renewal rate)

- confronted with multiple failures or breakdowns (compare with the «robustness» of pencils!)

- effects upon motivation

b- Immobilization and investment upon materials instead of upon persons

- neglect of teachers’ training

- employees’ disqualification (expert systems)

- effects upon motivation

3. Serious dangers to avoid

c- Negative impacts upon quality of language

- poor efficiency of automatic correctors

- frequent utilization of semi-natural language

- explosive proliferation of English

d- Writing skills get less and less exercised

- graphics environment (clicking-dragging-scrolling)

- overuse of images, animations and video-clips (the new culture of «clipping-zapping-surfing»)

- overexploitation of «copy-paste authoring» (same information over and over, merely reorganized)

3. Serious dangers to avoid

e- New risks concerning cognitive development

- under-development of memory skills

- weakening our capacities for analogical reasoning and transfer

- under- development of search strategies

- weakening our capacities for imagination «Scientific rigor stems from creative imagination»

(Papert, 1972)

3. Serious dangers to avoid

f- Widening the (already huge) split between the cognitive and the affective domains

- metacognitivee strategies are acquired actively through expliciting one’s own cognitive processes

- well, it’s all the same for acquiring and mastering «meta-emotional» stratégies

- but ICT stress the cognitive rather than the affective side of adaptive behaviour

3. Serious dangers to avoid

a- “Education has to do with intervention”

- education is definitively not self learning

- there’s a strong need for transmitting cultural acquisitions, values and concepts

- there’s a need for «imitable» models

- there’s a need for integrative viewpoints and perspectives; that’s what teachers are for...

4. Hints for solutions

b- Renewed importance of teachers’ traning

- importance of being involved in the turning point

- reinvestment of cumulative experience

- emergency in preserving a critical look-up (denounce sheer nonsense)

- importance of openness regarding differences and for each to acquire vast networks of interconnected knowledge, that is CULTURE (in Quebec’s recent program, this is the main objective!)

4. Hints for solutions

c- Put back the pedagogical relation at the very core

- to learn, is also to develop one’s identity

- learning, always start from imitation and identification

- to learn also involves creating one’s exchange and communication network

- «how to learn» could also be learned (provided one can count on a good model!)

4. Hints for solutions

d- The socio-cognitive (and socio-affective)aspects of learning

- nothing really deep and important can be

acquired by one alone

- in the human species, knowledge is in the service of complex social interactions

- demonstration (even in math), is basically about convincing others (so as to foster coordination)

- others are absolutely necessary for validation and for confirmation

4. Hints for solutions

e- Hence the importance to develop exchange networks for mutual help

- about contents to develop and enrich

- about bugs and failures encountered

- about repertories of teaching and learning scenarios

- about successful implementations (under which conditions?)

4. Hints for solutions

4. Hints for solutions

f- Learning to make choices

- pedagogy vs hardware or software

- flashy software vs knowledge construction

- accessibility and robustness

- reliability of content (are the sources reliable? is the argumentation sensical?)

- protecting quality of language (that is, have the kids read more, write more, correct more)