A response to "How Technology Can Improve Learner-Centered Teaching"

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How Technology Can Improve Learner-Centered Teaching - Faculty Focus


The reasons, says our author, that tech facilitates learning in that ideal learner-centered classroom include:
  1. Shift the balance of power toward the learner
  2. Use content to organize activities
  3. Think of teaching as facilitating learning
  4. Responsibility for learning rests with the learner
  5. Evaluation provides a way to foster learning
I'm ok with this, in general. The problem is that an amazing number of students are still techno-illiterate. I have students who don't know how to attach files to e-mail; those who don't know the difference between Firefox and IE; those who don't know how to do any advance searches with Google; those who don't know how to create a full PPT file, much less embed video in one; students who don't even know how to create a header in a Word doc. This is true both at the university and the two-year college, but especially in the latter, and especially in the rural areas.

When the comp instructor still has the instructional authority in the classroom because he has to instruct the students on both the curriculum and the technology, the balance of power is not shifted toward the learner. 

A few years ago I had a 7:00 a.m. class (I know). I had a young man, but older than the just-out-of-highs-chool students. He didn't know to open Word. He didn't know how to save a file. After a week, I cornered him in the hallway, and emphasized that this was a composition course, not a tech course, and if he couldn't handle the technology, that was okay -- I would accept everything in manuscript on college-rule paper. He apologized humbly, and then noted that he had been in prison for seven years. He had just gotten out and enrolled in college. His techno-illiteracy was because the revolution had passed him by while he was in jail. He learned (on his own) quick, and learned to write, too. But it wasn't the technology that "shifted the balance of power" back to him; it was the writing and his determination that empowered him. 

I'm still a tech devoté, that won't change. But I don't believe that tech is the answer to better writing, or to better learning. 

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