"...but it's peculiar--this great highway to glory looks exactly like the road to El Taboso, where you can buy chickens cheap."
-Sancho Panza in The Man of La Mancha-

Reflections on the Webquest

The webquest on the linked page was done as a class assignment in iMET. The Webquest is a highly structured lesson format, which seems almost to be an attempt to find a use for computer technology in education.

I am of the opinion (apparently not shared by many in iMET) that computer technology, and especially the internet, should be used when it provides needed capability not available from other tools, not as a replacement for those other tools. It will be obvious when that capability is needed; no other tools will do the job.

As long as we are having to look for excuses to use computer technology, it is not yet an integral part of what we do. Do we have to look for reasons to use pencils, paper and books or crayons, scissors and paste? Probably not. They have become a seamless part of things we do, and we use them without thinking about the tool. Our thoughts are on what we hope to accomplish, not the tool we use to get there.

This is not to say that computer technology does not offer unique capabilities, or that it should not become a commonplace tool used where it offers advantage, ignored where other tools do a better job. But I think it indicates that the technology has not yet become as indispensable and fully central in our lives and our education as some would have us believe. Education can happen without computer technology--indeed without books, paper and pencils. Blaming lack of technology for students' failure to learn is an easy scapegoat, but ignores the fact that people were teaching and learning for millennia prior to the availability of such tools.

If computer technology is to become as important in education as paper and pencil, it must become as commonplace. The one (or two, five or ten) computer classroom simply in not enough. Even computer labs with a 1:1 student to computer ratio are not adequate. If the computer is to become an indispensable tool of education, every student must have immediate, continual access to the tool. The cost of such technology is becoming such that it is not unreasonable to expect students to provide their own equipment and access.

That day is coming, perhaps not long in the future. But there is a danger even in that. If we develop students who are wizards with the technology, but helpless without that digital umbilical cord, we have trained, not educated, them. An educated person will function with whatever tools the situation offers, able to draw upon an internal store of factual and conceptual knowledge. We run the risk of developing students who, with literally all the information in the world, know nothing, have no ability practically to apply that information, to think creative thoughts or arrange information into new knowledge.

Let's recognize computer technology for what it is: a great toy, a good tool and a terrible master. Use it where it works, but keep the other tools sharp as well.
 
 

On to the Quest!
            Keep the other tools sharp as well....