I just thought I'd share a couple of useful tidbits with you all here via the blog. First, I'd like to highly recommend this piece–Technology as Epistemology–by Peter Schilling, the IT director at Amherst. It's a provocative essay, and you may find that you disagree, but it's useful as an entry point into this huge and important conversation about just how technology affects not only learning, but the processes of thought and knowledge creation themselves. I'd love to hear what you all think (feel free to post separately or as comments if you want to conduct this conversation here).
The other two resources that I'd like to point out are the Creative Commons and Academic Commons sites. Both of these sites are committed to creating and making available materials that are functionally copyright-free in non-commercial environments and they can be valuable tools for finding materials for our own online resources and for getting ideas about how others are using technology all over the world. Read their mission statements if you are interested–they put their perspectives much more eloquently than I can here.
I’ve found that another handy online resource is del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), which is an online bookmark management system that effectively gives you access to your bookmarks, no matter where you might be.
-Alex
Looking quickly at this article, I’m a little disappointed. It seems to be arguing that how we think changes based on training–which is an important point. Yet it doesn’t say much about how current technology changes how we think. What does it mean to be a person who the “linking” mindset? About five years ago, I saw a lot in print about thinking fast or “does multitasking mean your thinking smarter or less efficiently?” I’d like to hear more on the hows of the Tivo/iPod/website nurtured mind.
I’ve found that del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), which is an online bookmark management system, is another good resource.
Alex, del.icio.us is a pretty neat little system, and interestingly enough, I can set the blog up to work with it very easily. I’ll add our del.icio.us gizmo on the links section to the right and you can check it out for yourself.
–Ryan
This would be a good companion read for students studying Oliver Sacks, the process of writing, and their own use of technology, both in the class and in the future. Also, it could prompt and interesting discussion (or, at least, awareness) for students of how they are training themselves, how they are interacting with people similarly trained, and, perhaps most importantly, how they will be interacting with people who are NOT trained in and by technology, as they are. They’ll need to question what and how their different audiences perceive, the very question one must ask in all writing.
-Erin