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Burbules, Nicholas C. and Callister Jr., Thomas A. (2000).
Watch IT: The risks and promises of information technology
for education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Pp. xiii, 188.
$23.00 (Paper)
ISBN: 0-8133-9082-6
Reviewed by Lynda Tisa, University of Delaware and
Eugene
Matusov, University of Delaware
February 20, 2001
This interesting book by two prominent philosophers of
education, Nicholas Burbules and Thomas Callister, opens
with the assertion that we need to change our thinking about
technology in education. Instead of considering whether
technology is bad or good for education, the authors focus
on how technology is used in education, by whom and for what
purposes. Technological advances are accepted as part of our
day-to-day lives, and so educators have been already thrown
in or will be thrown into use of information technology.
The authors believe that technology has become indispensable
to emergent and as yet unforeseen forces in the educational
process.
Since the technology is here to stay, we need a critical
view of the uses of technology. The authors propose three
challenges to the conventional thinking about using
technology. First, they question the phrase "informational
technology" as being too passive. Traditionally, the word
"information" is often related to the transmission and
acquisition of facts. However, as the authors argue,
information is actively searched, encountered, selected,
interpreted, constructed, and filtered though links and
hyperlinks on the internet. Second, the authors propose a
relational view of technology that acknowledges the changes
that it has brought to our culture, social
interactions and institutions. Third, the authors argue for
a "post-technocratic" perspective that anticipates emergent
ways of utilizing, benefitting from and also problems
associated with using the technologies. "Technocratic"
approaches to information technology assume either
technological determinism (i.e., technology is either
inherently good or inherently bad) or technological
voluntarism (i.e., it is entirely up to technology designers
and users to define how to use the technology and what will
be its consequences). A "post-technocratic" perspective
anticipates and critically reviews these new emerging
aspects as well as it expects a transformation of the
criteria for the critique themselves. These three challenges
provide a basis for the themes of the next seven chapters.
Chapter 2 provides thought provoking issues of the debate
and definitions concerning access to the information
technology and the credibility of the accessed information.
The issues of access include the ability to find resources,
time to spend on-line, and deploying strategies for using
what is accessed. The issue of credibility focuses on how to
discern and evaluate the information the user receives on
line. The authors argue that a proper definition of access
needs to be thoughtful and critical, and that we must
discuss the quality as well as quantity of access. The
authors (p. 22) remind us that there are important social,
cultural, and economic dimensions to access in poorer
societies and communities. The analysis of access extends
to a focus on the educational dimensions of the knowledge,
skills and dispositions that are amassed for an
understanding of the technology. The implications for
educators are serious because low quality access can drive a
wedge between the haves and have-nots in society.
Questions of access and credibility are addressed in the
context of effective access. The authors discuss the need to
develop the capacity to read selectively, evaluate and
question information on line, as well as user's own goal of
using the information. The authors call this capability
"hyper-reading." This skill includes learning to make
connections, to question the "links" that are provided, and
to question what is absent on the internet, what is the
purpose of the information, and what are one's own goals in
the interaction.
Chapter 3 looks at hypertext as a kind of informational
environment that allows for linear as well as nonlinear
connections among ideas. Since hypertexts are more complex,
the issue of developing capabilities to a more active
reading and understanding of the information becomes an
educational dilemma. The rate of change and growth of this
technology is exponential and requires enhanced cognitive
skills to manage and use it. The effect could be that from
one generation to the next, the standards of competence
accelerate as the technology moves forward. Educators may
find themselves occasionally needing the assistance of the
younger generations who are more familiarity with the latest
advances. This could transform the role of the educator and
the dynamics of classroom interactions. The cognitive
aspect makes for a learning environment where information,
materials, and ideas are linked together in multiple ways.
This new organization of information influences the way
knowledge is processed. The user needs augmented critical
capabilities in order effectively to use the new
technologies.
Chapter 4 discusses the need for users to be able to
critique the information they access on the internet. The
authors argue that the ability to evaluate the information
one can access requires differing levels of critical
judgment. The authors explore two kinds of readers:
critical readers, and hyper-readers. The critical user has a
specific question or goal when accessing the internet.
Critical users gather information, select, evaluate and
judge it in relation to their predetermined needs.
Hyper-readers are more willing to transform their own purposes as
they build links and connections among new information.
Hyper-readers are also able to read across links, and they
can use links in ways that can redefine, enhance or
otherwise alter the information presented. Under such
conditions, of paramount importance are the criteria by
which we make judgments about the information we access on
the internet. Hyper-textual reading has nonlinear and
lateral associations; readers need to adjust to this
transformed way of reading.
While the authors correctly reveal the nonlinear nature of
the organization of much of the information on the internet,
and also pointing out difficulties that some users may have
in learning this non-linearity, in our view they do not seem
to critically consider who precisely these users are. Some
cultures in US and outside may find adjusting to this type
of text less of a concern. Unlike in a US mainstream Anglo
culture with its predominant linear organization of reading
and writing, many other cultures have predominantly
nonlinear ways of organizing ideas (Kaplan, 1966). Other
languages involve different sorts of linearities in, for
example, print and paper media. For example, when we look
at Chinese, reading involves vertical relationships rather
than those that are horizontal, as in English and many other
languages. It also has a nonlinear narrative organization.
Chinese is the world's most popular language and China the
world's most populous country. And its internet connectivity
is rapidly expanding. The current dominance of English on
the internet may in time give way to Chinese and other
languages. Consistent with such developments, the internet
will ultimately have more cross cultural interactions,
textual multiplicities, and various ways of disseminating
information. The internet could potentially connect all the
people in the world, thereby potentially challenging the
linear orientation that currently predominates.
Chapter 5 looks at the questions of censorship and
continues to examine how encouraging critical reading of the
internet can help minimize objectionable material. This
analysis of the web net moves into areas of surveillance and
privacy issues. Chapter 6 discusses the implication of
surveillance technology for notions of privacy. This is an
issue that concerns educators because students have so
little privacy, and as the classroom becomes wired, students
could be further screened and scrutinized. While many people
view the loss of privacy as a "tradeoff," the real question
for educators and their students may be the rights of
consent or refusal in cyberspace. So far, emerging
mainstream approaches of dealing with the issue are
technological or organizational censorship of the internet.
The authors propose the alternative, pedagogical, approach
of sharing adults' concerns about the perceived dangers of
the internet and engaging children in finding a collective
solution of the problem.
Chapter 7 looks at the effects of the commercialization of
the internet on teachers and their classrooms. Students are
exposed to advertisements on web sites that may use style
over substance to gain popularity and receive return visits.
The authors examine these and other blurrings of boundaries
between education and business. Technology companies are
offering hardware and software to schools in exchange for
the right to show students their commercials. Should
educators mingle such commercial interests with the
classroom and its impressionable youth? Is this "the
mingling of yarn of good and ill" (as the authors quote
Shakespeare)? The authors argue that "advertisements foster
a cultural of seduction where popular appeal and appearance
can become of greater importance than content" (p. 143).
This is an issue every educational institution will face;
and how they come to terms with this difficult and
conflicting situation will no doubt have a long-term effect
on how technology is used and presented to the next
generation of students. The authors come to grips with one
of the major innovations and changes in the history of
pedagogy and how to balance the need for "free" technology
with the educational needs of the student. This section
should be required reading for every administrator, teacher
and decision-maker, who should then use it as a starting
point for further discussion of this crucial topic. The
last chapter examines the types of community that are
possible on the internet. The authors state that the
internet is too decentralized to be a community, but could
be called "meta-community": a set of different communicative
spaces and communities that exist side-by-side. The genesis
of such meta-communities will slowly but steadily affect
teachers, schools and instruction in the future. A community
is often defined as a spatial or territorial unit of social
groupings in which people have a feeling of belonging and a
sense of identity. But communities also influence who our
friends will be, define social standards, shape our
worldview, and exercise formal and informal social controls.
The implication for these communities could lead to many of
the problems we already face within urban environments.
Where size can limit people from getting to know how each
other, there can be spatial segregation, based on social
class, lifestyle, economics, race, and ethnicity. If these
"meta-communities" exist side by side, users could become
insensitive to the events around them, restricting their
attention to their primary group. Internet-mediated
attachments could therefore lead to feelings of alienation
from already-existing communities. In order to avoid this
alienation there is a need for reflection on how to build a
sense of interdependence within the "meta-community."
This book will inform those best described as critical
users. We found that that it addresses many of the
institutional and perspectival challenges presented by the
new technologies, particularly concerning issues such as
student privacy and the commercialization of the internet.
However, it seems to us that the book falls short in
exploring the dramatic sociological, economic, and political
changes and challenges educators will face due to
technological advance. Although the authors provide many
examples and illustrations of their points, it is unclear
where their experience with use of information technology in
education comes from (i.e., the methodology they used). It
is a bit too generic and neglects important particularities.
For example, the book only briefly discusses the "digital
divide" phenomenon, the fact that information technology is
not distributed evenly throughout society or the world.
In general, the authors raise many provocative issues but
they offer few creative solutions. There are also some
troubling omissions. For example, among other interesting
new educational applications of technology left out of the
book, they omit from their analysis the spreading use of
classroom websites covered by a password for educational
rather than commercial or strictly gatekeeping purposes.
More significantly, we wish the authors had explored more
fully what new roles the teacher may assume vis-à-vis this
new and perpetually rapidly changing technology. It also
would have been interesting had the authors more critically
assessed their own sympathy for critical thinking and hyper-
reading as value-laden criteria, thereby situating their
chosen values in the sociocultural and political
circumstances of their own lives and communities.
The dialogue about the new information technology, its
users, the changes it is bringing to schools and the
reorientation or our classrooms is a serious one. This book
certainly raised thought-provoking questions that should be
of concern to any educator. We highly recommend this book
to educators, designers of the information technology and
scholars of education and information technology.
Reference
Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in
intercultural education. Language Learning, 16(1), 1-20.
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