Human beings and technology: some short reflections to be developed

Paper presented on the occasion of the Study Visit in CEEDCV (March 2013) USE OF ICT IN LEARNING
Vicent Mengual Physics and Chemistry Departament CEEDCV

vicent.mengual@ceedcv.es

Abstract: The author suggests some ideas and thoughts considering certain implications coming from the relationship between society and technology, particularly the idea that technology leads and causes some loss of control over our decisions. Some possible consequences in education are also analyzed.

This is a very short paper. It contains only a few ideas that should be further developed. They are some reflections about learning and teaching that take into account the relationship between humans and technological developments, and the fact that if we are not vigilant some points of our behaviour can be driven not by ourselves but by technology. Consider two trivial examples taken from the use of landline versus mobile phones: a) in the past we employed public phones to talk privately and now use private phones to talk publicly; b) The mobile technology, sometimes, invites us to lie about our location (from home with a mobile: I left home, Im in a jam). Now, two examples from daily teaching practice. a) Some typical students in distance learning systems expect to find, not only the possibility of not attending in person the contact lessons, they also expect to have a selfstudy tempo, other than the constant flow that occurs in a contact lessons teaching centre. New technologies are supposed to add flexibility to students' relationships with distance learning centers, and flexibility is what gives meaning to the concept "open learning". But through virtual classroom tools and depending on how we use and configure them, we can create inflexibilities, impose pressure, and trouble the study tempo of some students. For example, dosing the release of the study materials or setting limits for delivery of tasks. b) Today, for a student to follow distance studies, a certain level of competence in new technologies is necessary. But we should not over-complicate the requirements demanded for students to navigate through the virtual space, find information and interact with the expert, especially if it could be an obstacle or an excessive expenditure of energy, as these would be subtracted from the energy necessary to study the subjects. The main protagonist, the real objective is the study of the subjects: languages, history, mathematics, science, drawing, electronics, or philosophy, for instance. And of course, we could forget that some students might have financial difficulties to keep the technical requirements necessary to study at a distance, especially here in Spain, in these times of slump, cutbacks, and excessive unemployment. It would be an unforgiveable oblivion.

The last example concerns the temptation to extend the automation in teaching. Today a worship of innovation has been installed in society, so it seems that innovation has a value in itself. One consequence is that we are led to consider as outdated what is not new, suffering a gross confusion between old and outdated.

Since Aristotle, symbolically speaking, education means human experts helping human learners. It is an ancient idea, as Aristotle is, but not outdated. Modernity means using the opportunities which new communication technologies, programmed learning improvements and learning machines potential, for instance, offer us. Roles can experience changes with technological growth and developments of education theories, but the educational fact is essentially the same. It doesn't matter of what kind of educational institution we are talking about distance learning or face to face teaching, education means human experts helping human learners. New technologies provide us new vehicles to share with our students, but these innovations should not cut down contact and interaction along the trip.

New communication technologies allow equalizing the level of support and assistance provided to students in distance learning and in contact teaching. This has been a very good achievement: the feeling of distance or nearness no longer depends on the physical gap between the actors of the educational fact, but on the quality of care provided by teachers. Education means human experts helping human learners, but those who think in terms of economic efficiency may be tempted to applying the potential of modern educational software to reduce the human resources devoted to education.

Technologies provoke changes, some of them are wished, others are not, some are fast, others are slow. The important point is that most of these changes happen without the control of society, as if they were natural phenomena and the only thing we could do were adapting to them. This is what the mainstream of society thinks. I wish society, democratically acting, decided what technologies to use, how to use them and to what extent. But forget it; this is as Lennons dream of peace Imagine all the people deciding together their future. It is curious, individual freedom is formally protected in modern democracies but what about freedom of society as a whole?

It doesnt matter whether the changes are fast or gradual, sudden or imperceptible in the short time, some technological advances may cause a loss of control in our behaviour and way of life and our chance of choice as a society can be reduced. For example, changes caused by the massive use of fossil fuels are forcing humanity to undertake actions to fight changes, cutting down their chance of choice as a society. In relation to new technologies for education, something imperceptible may also occur and cause changes in the long term.

New technologies favor automatic processes and the use of automation can make education become some kind of industrial product that can be reproduced easily with lowering costs. From this point of view, education is seen in terms of profitability, something related to business matters. In this vision the role of the human factor could suffer a loss. On behalf of technological efficiency, innovation and modernity, education could follow the way of automation and reduction of human resources as other areas of human activity in all occupation sectors have already followed. Languages learning, due to their features, could open the door to this process.