More technology = more knowledge?
Teaching in a community college has given me a special perspective on the issue of students’ access to technology. While I encounter plenty of students with cell phones, laptops, iPods, etc., I also have students who take the bus to get to and from campus. Who see textbooks as their greatest luxury of the semester. Who live in households where they can’t depend on someone to pay the electric bill each month – let alone supplement their lifestyle with numerous electronic gadgets.
And while assuredly there is a problem in these scenarios with students having access to tools, I am struck by the note in the DigiRhet.org article that providing these students with access to publishing venues is equally as important. My teaching philosophy incorporates an element of empowerment of students, which access to opportunities and abilities for publishing digitally obviously creates.
Yet I think it’s essential to heed the authors’ warning not to reduce this to mere technological savvy. But instead, they describe the need for a strong sense of engagement with technology that invokes critical thinking. This “requires us to understand, criticize and make judgments about a technology’s interactions with, and effects on, culture” (236). I am glad to see cyberliteracy defined in a way that involves more than material possessions. Teaching students “the ways in which these technologies interpellate us – as viewers, users, consumers, and writers – and interrogate the ways in which these devices play a rhetorical role in our lives” (237) seems to be just as empowering as a gift card at Best Buy.
Perhaps some of these students might have more reason - from their social, cultural or economic status – to question their own relationships with technology because they could be highly imbalanced or oppressive. It’s heartening for me to see the opportunities that can be created for students – who haven’t always been the recipients of many opportunities – and the skills (beyond software proficiency) they can take away from our classrooms.
And while assuredly there is a problem in these scenarios with students having access to tools, I am struck by the note in the DigiRhet.org article that providing these students with access to publishing venues is equally as important. My teaching philosophy incorporates an element of empowerment of students, which access to opportunities and abilities for publishing digitally obviously creates.
Yet I think it’s essential to heed the authors’ warning not to reduce this to mere technological savvy. But instead, they describe the need for a strong sense of engagement with technology that invokes critical thinking. This “requires us to understand, criticize and make judgments about a technology’s interactions with, and effects on, culture” (236). I am glad to see cyberliteracy defined in a way that involves more than material possessions. Teaching students “the ways in which these technologies interpellate us – as viewers, users, consumers, and writers – and interrogate the ways in which these devices play a rhetorical role in our lives” (237) seems to be just as empowering as a gift card at Best Buy.
Perhaps some of these students might have more reason - from their social, cultural or economic status – to question their own relationships with technology because they could be highly imbalanced or oppressive. It’s heartening for me to see the opportunities that can be created for students – who haven’t always been the recipients of many opportunities – and the skills (beyond software proficiency) they can take away from our classrooms.
posted by Beth @ 7:03 PM
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