Week Three

Reading in Renninger and Shumar, I found many things that I truly agree with. We have progressed from a society dependent upon internet use. In the health care spectrum, the internet can be an ally and our greatest enemy. In times past, our grandparents and parents took whatever the physicians said as the gospel and their word was gold. In the current generation, we have already diagnosed ourselves by the time we visit with our physician and we compare his findings to the findings of the internet. If they are not in harmony, we lean toward trusting the internet. Such examples in chapter 9 of our text are MMR and GM foods in the United Kingdom. But we must learn what information is valid and what information is flimsy.

Browsing through the aisles of any bookstore, one sees a wide array of books genered to help us help ourselves. Society at this time is geared to make themselves a better person. Because of the information age, we tend to spend more time researching which is a good thing, but if we are not careful of the sources we use, can be detrimental.

In reading Chapter 11 of Renninger and Shumar, I came across the example of virtual birthday parties and funerals. My mind drifted back to a seminar that I attended on communication. One of the things the speaker highlighted was that our society has become so technical that we do not speak to a vast array of people. We have minimal contact with other people. We go to the automoatic teller to get money, we go through the drive through to get food and we send email and im's and text those we need to talk to so that we do not actually interact with others. She stated this is why depression is on the rise in society. It made sense to me. So I must ask, if all learning is done online (not that I am opposed to it :) ) are we doing ourselves a disgrace by not interacting with others in the physical sense?

Having said that, reading in Chapter 12 we see that technology is a great asset for a learning community. Technology gives us so many more resources to gather information from. It is an awesome and wonderful thing to talk to someone in another state or country and gather things that have helped them in a particular situation. Their experiences can only serve to enhance our learning. The example of the Russian activity theory - tools, activity, people are the basic core of what is needed in a learning community.

And speaking of tools...
In the extra reading for this week, Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning, spoke of how important it is to not only have the tool but mostly, to know how to use it. An improperly used tool will not accomplish what it was designed for. I have a little example that occurred this past week. My sister in law's boyfriend and his friends, who consider themselves to be cowboys, we trying to get a horse to go into a small barn. They had the tools they needed: a rope, a lariat, the barn. But yet they were unsuccessful. My husband (I must toot his horn here) arrived to find them with a lariat around the horses neck and the rope tied around his back legs and four "cowboys" tugging on the ropes and pulling to try to lead the horse to the barn. Now, if you have had any experiences with horses, they are stubborn. Unless they are well trained, they will do only what they want. So my husband told them to leave the horse alone, took the rope off his back legs and begin to talk softly to the horse, petting him and letting the horse lead around for a while. Within a few minutes he had the horse in the barn.

And the moral of this story is ... although they had everything they needed to get the horse to the barn, they did not know the correct way to use them and that made them unsuccessful. When someone came along who knew what to do with the tools they had, they progressed.

So just as important is the tool, so as important is the user.