The Machine is Us

Comment

Comment by Michael McVey on January 14, 2008 at 9:31pm

Harlan Ellison wrote a Sci Fi story about that very thing years ago. It is called "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream." The machine is as big as the world and keeps humans alive for its own pleasure. Very dystopian.

Comment by Michael McVey on January 12, 2008 at 6:55pm

Right. I sat my daughter at one, put in the paper, and turned it on only to have her ask where the monitor was.

Comment by Michael McVey on January 12, 2008 at 10:20am

What a great reflection. My younger students do not have any comprehension of having to write papers with a bottle of White Out on hand. I'm a dinosaur. :-)

Comment by Michael McVey on January 10, 2008 at 1:04pm

The fast pace was addressed by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock. I like the term "information smog" to describe the pace of information. NPR had a story over the break about The Problem of the Year: Information Overload

Comment by Michael McVey on January 7, 2008 at 9:52pm

Brenda wrote, "in my classroom when students unconsciously use IM abbreviations in their papers and essays. It's hard to argue with the ingenuity of abbreviations that save keystrokes - efficiency is a very important and powerful concept. I also think such shortcuts have had a negative impact on their ability to spell."

Wow! In their essays? I left the English classroom in 1999. It was two years after I left that students, once freed to work on their assigned work in my computer lab fired up IM programs. Right from the advent of that technology, they found it absolutely necessary to stay in contact with their peers and friends. It was as unconscious an act as the turning on of a cell phone after a movie. There is something profound happening with communication and teleprecense and we, as educators, have to have a solid understanding of it. I hope this course can give us all that solid grounding.

Comment by Michael McVey on January 7, 2008 at 9:47pm

Eric wrote, "but I worry that it may be opening a "slippery slope" to teachers being expected to be on call after hours for their students through social networking."

Good point. One of the things I want to do in this course is uproot interesting perspectives from practitioners such as yourself and add them to an informed discussion about social networking sites and Web 2.0 applications.

Comment by Michael McVey on October 23, 2007 at 5:14pm

Please add a brief and substantial comment about this video, perhaps a reflection on the changes you have noticed in how you or your students write today. You might also choose to reflect on some aspect of how the new tools will affect our interactions and change our teaching.