Re: Teaching technology separately
Kevin Won (WONK@ohsu.edu)
Tue, 13 Aug 1996 01:23:34 EDT
I don't believe that we can any longer draw a distinct line between what is the
"technological" and what is the "subject". It seems to me that the means and
the ends in some ways are identical: teaching students of English basic to
intermediate Wordperfect skills is, in contemporary times, synonomous with
teaching them English (if we agree that writing is one of the cornerstones of
Engish). Web browsing competency is as important and will become even more
important to contemporary researchers as card-catalog proficiency is to the
high school student of the pre-computer era. I don't think we can seperate the
"English" from the "Technology" any longer--and I might step back and say that
we never really did anyway: the technological advances on silicon of today
replicate those of yesteryears' microfische, inter-library loan transportation
infrastructure, etc. These "technologies" are standard fare for teaching
English ("how to use the library"). Now the library is much more complex but
much easier to use and more fun, not to mention interwoven with all sorts of
ways to manipulate and present this information. I don't believe that the
electronic tools of today are out of order different than those of before. As
a matter of fact, the electronic equivelants usually bare the old name (i.e.
"clipboard", "hypercard/notecard"), suggesting how similiar these new tools are
to the old ones. From this prospective, it may even appear silly to ask the
question "is it appropriate to teach technology with English?"
Kevin Won
WONK@ohsu.edu