Re: [xmca] Will Professors be the ice deliverymen of tomorrow? The question of professorial obsolescence

[Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>]

I do enjoy Postman's work (who, by the way, was a long-time editor of the
mainline journal General Semantics, ETC). Here is a video that I thought
might be more on point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GslzLHrve2M&feature=related

Somewhere around 12 minutes in he quotes an Apple exec who says that any
problem in education that hasn't been solved without technology will not be
solved WITH technology. And as I was suggesting in my prior post, it might
be the case that technology will only make pre-existing problems worse.

-greg

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>wrote:

> On this and wider themes, here's a video of Neil Postman:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uglSCuG31P4
>
> Huw
>
> On 30 July 2012 18:00, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Thought that this article called for some meditation by us younger
> > scholars, and perhaps some discussion by young and old:
> >
> >
> http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/07/30/essay-whether-online-education-will-make-professors-obsolete
> >
> >
> > The article is a thoughtful engagement with the question of whether or
> not
> > professors will be made obsolete by online teaching at the college level.
> >
> > Setting aside knee-jerk responses from this professorial hopeful, it
> seems
> > like what is needed is some good quality research on the diff between
> > online and co-present teaching. And, in particular, what can be taught
> more
> > effectively with online courses and with what is lost in these kinds of
> > learning contexts? I think Robert Lecusay (among many others) has got the
> > beginning of an answer to this question with his in progress dissertation
> > that points to the importance of bodily co-presence for the mediation of
> > local cultural knowledge of various sorts. This also points in the
> > unfortunate direction of a new kind of digital divide: when local
> cultural
> > knowledge is shared and/or relatively presupposable between folks on
> either
> > end of the on-line connection - as is the case with culturally advantaged
> > middle (and upper) class students - things are likely to go more
> smoothly.
> > This raises the possibility that online courses will further disadvantage
> > those who are already disadvantaged b.c. of the increased difficulty of
> > drawing on local funds of knowledge when the student's funds of knowledge
> > differ from those of the (mostly middle-class)  instructors. Not a pretty
> > picture.
> >
> > On the other hand, for those students whose local cultural knowledge
> > matches up well with the instructor's, online learning can open up new
> > possibilities. I had a student last quarter who had a younger brother in
> > high school who did an online self homeschooling program. He would spend
> > his mornings doing schoolwork - finishing by noon - and would spend his
> > afternoon making good money as a contractor designing websites. Maybe not
> > quite what Marx had in mind with his idea of working at the factory in
> the
> > morning, fishing and hunting in the afternoon, and being a critical
> critic
> > in the evening, but I wonder if there isn't a way to see technology as
> > having a liberatory component to it and to capital-ize on it without
> > fetishizing it (much as Marx saw capitalism).
> >
> > -greg
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
> > Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
> > Department of Communication
> > University of California, San Diego
> > http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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