Response Chapter 1 & 2

Richardson in this chapter has a lot to say on the speed with which technology is advancing, how students are embracing it and the school systems are resisting it, or are at least very slow to adapt to it. He makes a very good point when he speaks of children who "are 'out there' using a wide variety of technologies that they are told they can't use wen they come to school." Indeed, this seems like recipe for repression, which soon will stir up and explode in our faces. We hope to make a place kids enjoy rather than dread. But equipping every student in every school with high-end technology may be simply impossible. Individual kids with parents who dish out the dough to buy new expensive equipment (whether they can actually afford to or not) are always going to outpace a massive network of schools. It could be argued that students and their parents are helping to keep schools behind in this matter, for the faster they keep up with the new toys, companies are going to continue to develop faster and more expensive technologies, and schools will constantly feel the lack.

On the other side of the coin, however, I almost appreciate that schools are slow to adapt to new technologies. Richardson doesn't seem to have any qualms with the pace of technological advance, but I am afraid I do. Simply because it's new does not mean it is good or beneficial or more efficient. A lot of technologies kids use (and are forbidden to use in schools) are absolutely aggravating, and completely inappropriate for a learning environment. I have in mind here kids' obsession with Game Boys and the irritating tunes kids play on their cell phones, either via ringtone or mp3 player. These items are not conducive to learning, and have the potential to only hamper the process. So restricting kids' use of technology in school seems only logical, depending on the technology. But therein lies the problem. There are to date SO MANY new tech-toys with others developing SO QUICKLY that school administrators have little chance of keeping up with all of them in order to decipher which are helpful to learning and which are harmful. Hence what we end up with is a banal prohibtion of all personal technologies.

Ugh.