Information Technology: Evolution or Revolution?
In my reflective post I would like to discuss my findings and understanding on this question about classifying information technology as evolutionary or revolutionary!
In a recent conference I asked the question to some participants and a majority of them tended towards the term ‘evolutionary’ and only a few considered technology as ‘revolutionary’. There seemed to be a concern that mentioning technology as revolutionary may scare some educators hence their choice!
I would refer to this excellent article dated 2012 I found on the topic of my blog post and you will read that the presenter touches upon some of the underlying principles of ‘education’ with eloquence, well suited vocabulary and and educator’s approach which I discussed in my posts for this course. In contrst to this a book ‘Information Technologies and Social transformation’ published back in 1985, in it’s chapter entitled ‘The Information Age: Evolution or Revolution?’ mentions in context of the British Industrial Revolution that “technology does not occur in vacuum. Instead it occurs in a social matrix and interacts with the society. Thus, despite the evolutionary nature of it’s individual technical components, the British Industrial Revolution marked a truly revolutionary transformation because it changed where and how people worked, lived, thought, played and prayed.’ The chapter concludes with the statement about information age: ‘While it might be evolutionary, in the sense that all the changes and benefits will not appear overnight, it will be revolutionary in its effect upon our society.’
While reading the ‘criticism’ section on the article of ‘Educational Technology’ I suddenly wanted to check the wikirating of this article which brought me to the criticism of the criticism part and that was an even more interesting read. Another article which did not attend to my topic of interest directly but touched upon the subject in some indirect way can be found at this link.
I do not feel I have found the answer yet but I have certainly made advancements in my understanding of the question which I have asked myself and my audience. I am keen to continue seeking more sources of information online and offline as well as design and carry out an action research. I very much hope and make commitment to myself that I will dedicate 2 hours every week from my busy work and personal schedule to dedicate to this and find partners in my quest from the school where I work. How fortunate am I to have these possibilities and access to such invaluable sources of knowledge.
I participated in active classroom teaching for this project of my COETAIL Course 1 with my colleague at Western Academy of Beijing and used my learnings from this course in designing a unit for ITGS (Information Technology in Global Society) class on Digital Multimedia. The UbD document is attached below:
1 COMMENT
I love this part of the project: “Students will be give homework to research and create / find images of different kinds and they will exhibit their correct understanding of techniques involved in manipulation and storage of digital multimedia to identify fakes or manipulated images from originals.” Would be so cool to see some samples of what they develop here!