Anti-technology/eLearning article in University of Oklahoma newspaper

[Andrew Reinhard]

From the Feb. 8 edition of the University of Oklahoma campus paper, with comments from Laura Gibbs and others in rebuttal:

http://hub.ou.edu/articles/article.php?item_id=1944659688

Feel free to respond to the article there (or here!).

[Owen Cramer]

The nub of truth in the editorial is that technology doesn't *replace* face-to-face teaching/learning interactions: if you're boring you're boring with PowerPoint too. I've attended enough boring workshops conducted by IT professionals to be able to say that techies aren't any better teachers than the teachers are--perhaps worse.

[Bill Parsons]

See my latest blog post. The article is wrong headed. Everything said could also be said for a bad professor in any format.

[Laura Gibbs]

Hope springs eternal, lemonade from lemonades, silver lining and so on - in response to the editorial (which has moved for some reason to a new URL... mysterious!), the very nice fellow who is the director of the Instructional Development Program here at my school is contacting the student newspaper to see if they would not be willing to do a series of articles on truly innovative teaching that is happening on campus - both in the classroom and online, with and without technology, etc. I sure hope that happens! One of the biggest problems that I think teachers face is that we get so little opportunity to really learn about what other teachers are experimenting with - as a result, we tend to teach the way we were taught, and it becomes an inherently conservative system. Anyway, we'll see - but if the kerfuffle over Powerpoint turns into a larger discussion about education in the student newspaper (normally filled with sports articles), that will be a big plus! :-)

[Lisa St. Louis]

Oh my, what a sense of deja vu. Do you remember that article which I sent to you a while ago where RWU was under attack for teaching Latin online? This is more of the same. Good for you for straightening out these people.

[Laura Gibbs]

Hi Lisa! I remember exactly!!! What is sad about this situation is that it is the students doing it to themselves, when they have so much to gain by better and smarter use of technology as part of their education, and so much to lose by its neglect (the professors, by contrast, maybe have something to gain but basically nothing tangible to lose - hence the low incentive for REAL change).
:-)