Goins Billy LMO Week 1 Reading Activity – Response 1 to Keith Lay

1st Paragraph form original post

LMO Lay, Keith E-Learning development

As miraculous as they are, our brains are poorly designed for learning. In fact it is not at all designed for efficiency or order and, instead, develops best through selection and survival (Jensen, 2008). The direct teaching approaches that the West inherited from church and state sanctioned universities were the norm up through the mid twentieth century. Throughout history, communication technology, especially those of the written word and image media, challenged their claimed authority. In the early twentieth century, views of constructionist education theories emerged with John Dewey and others, suggesting that humans best generated knowledge and meaning through experience (Soltis, n.d.). Unfortunately, public utilization of this 'experimental' active learning approach was fiscally untenable until technology could offer a practical method of creating a unique learning environment for each student.

Response
One of the reasons I enjoy being a technology teacher is that technology is constantly changing and evolving. I began working with computers in the military on systems that used punched paper tape and data cards as the medium for storing and programming information and in comparison I’m constantly amazed at the digital / computerized products and services available. Your post is a reminder that educational communities adapt these changes at an infinitely slower rate than the purchasing public. Your statements concerning the necessary investment, platform and design restrictions, and a lack of teacher training are solid explanations for the lag in adaptation. Along with these issues, I’d like to add that there is a short sidedness of vision enhanced or re-enforced by budget and narrow curriculum standards. Fueled by the fear of failing standardized tests and not meeting annual yearly progress under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and now with the addition of the Response to Interventions (RTI) mandate, school districts focus give budget, time, and manpower priority and efforts to meeting these goals. My expectation is that until LMS and other e-learning platforms can demonstrate correlations between such products and significant improvement in standardized test scores adaptation will remain painfully slow.