Monday, February 6, 2012

Criticism of Chapter 1

In regards to the Networking effects discussed in Chapter one I see many essential flaws to the overall concept and more importantly the important bulleted advantages on page 27.  I will explain points that I have a problem with.
  For starters “Classrooms will be more engaging."  I fail to see how they will be more engaging, because with all of the things that are availible on the web and other computer distractions I see no explanation for how they will be more engaging.  An example is if I were to ask a question by sending it on a blog, the students might not see the question, and they would be doing their own thing on the internet.  Being a student I have witnessed this myself many times.  The only benefit is the students no longer have to know anything.  They can simply look up the questions on the internet rather than taking notes in class.
 Next, "Students are responsible for their own learning."  I tend to laugh at this obscured statement, because students are naturally lazy, and usually am not that motivated to do things on their own, and I would think most students would say that would be a joke.  Moreover, the students will not do any work until a few days before the work is due.  Again, I can attest to this because being a student a have seen and done just that.  In this case I see an increase in failure due to the fact that students that do not understand the material will take less interest in the subject and ultimately not care what the final grade will be, and therefore will learn little to nothing.  It almost seems like laziness on the side of administrators and teachers to have students do it themselves considering these are not adults in college this is one thing but high school or higher will prove to be even harder than it already is. 
Another interesting comment "Students are safer" doesn’t make much sense.  What doses having a network make things safer for the kids?  I understand the idea that if they are home they are safer, but you have as much danger at home as you do at school. 
Finally "Schools save time and money."  This does not make sense because the schools will have to constantly have to pay money to update the software and maintain their network.  This means more money spent to hire technicians.  As for the saving time, if the network goes down then the whole school is down, and the school loses a day, or two, or more all because of some simple technical difficulty.

These points describe what I took from Chapter 1 to be problematic as classrooms evolve.  The conversion from paper to online is a very complicated process with much good potential, but I believe that some of these potentials will be abused by everyone that uses them.  They can breed lazy and incompetent individuals all in an attempt to make teaching easier and more efficient.  I feel that these ideas should be slowly integrated into the Classroom. 

I would like to know how they believe that these ideas will be helpful.  Why do they think these ideas will work, and what supports that?  Just how effective is this idea compared to traditional teaching? 

Ultimately you have to either side with me or disagree, and help me understand how some of these ideas make sense.      This might help you see their point of view.      Help

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