Chapter 3 of Rethinking Education

There were actually a lot of points that I agreed with the skeptics in this chapter compared to the last chapter on the technology enthusiasts. One quote that really stood out to me was on page 48, "School Fosters just-in-case learning while technology fosters just-in-time learning." They say that the idea behind schooling is to teach students the things that they will need later in life. Technology skeptics believe that technology stresses the point to learn what you want when you need it. To an extent I can really agree with the skeptics. I think that the traditional structure of schooling is to teach students important things that they wouldn't learn on their own. These topics are important for later in their lives. Whereas if technology overtakes the schooling, and students get to decide what they learn about, I think that they will be missing out on a lot of important things. For example if I had the choice to not learn about American Politics in school, I probably wouln't have. The fact that I had an expert teach me about it and use examples that I could relate to, I got really interested in Politics.

There were also a lot of barriors to using technology in schools that were discussed in this chapter. One of the main ones is the cost and access to computers. Computers are expensive, and not every student has the access to one of them at home. There are also schools that don't have enough funding to give every student a large amount of use on the computers. It really isn't fair to the students who don't have as much access to computers as their classmates do. Technology can also disrupt classroom management. Computers can be distracting, espeically if not all of the students are on them at the same time. The clicking of the keyboard and the mouse can make it hard for other students to focus. Also goup work on computers tend to lead to a loud and chaotic classroom. Teachers are also there to teach information to the students that computers cannot. Like the book said, "The best teachers inspire their students to believe in themselves , and to work hard to accomplish their goals." I, in no way, think that computers are more important than teachers to a student's learning. I agree with the skeptics that technolgy based learning takes away from the richness of the classroom instruction and interaction. All in all, I think that technology should be included in the classroom but it shouldn't take away from the general idea of schooling.