That's it! That's human factor!

Thanks Mr. Tong very much for his comment.

I do agree Mr. Tong's point of view - people don't want to change. I think
there're 2 main reasons of this:

1. People are afraid that technology replaces their posts.

In my opinion, it's applicable for some mechanic or computing-intensive (e.g. accounting, manufacturing) jobs. However, for other areas, the technology is still too far to reach human's ability. The computing technology is able to predict the weather in one week but it can't predict when or where I will have my lunch tomorrow, not to mention whether it can judge how much the student has learnt.

2. The technology (so-called) doesn't meet our needs.

The goal of applying technology in teaching is to improve the quality of education. However, the fact is teachers feel exhausted to prepare e-materials or even animation effects with Flash (moving particles for Integrated Science, ha!). It can be ironic that students don't realize the hard-work of teachers but criticize the e-materials are too simple ..., anyway, they don't like them. The technology doesn't help.

I think we overestimated the technology. We wrongly believed information technology is everything. The real human-computer interaction is still developing stage. That means we have to pay much effort to computerize our works. And don't forget what educators need to improve is human-to-human interaction, with assistance of technology. Therefore, we have to alter our "traditional" attitude to technology, especially info-technology.

It seems too complicated for me to explain what and how we should make this change, but I'm sure we should understand what actual advantages the contemporary information technology can give. Those adv has already flashed in my mind: Storage and Search.

Massive Storage
That's what bookshelves and papers can never achieve. An harddisk can swallow the whole school library.

Global Search
Internet gives "lives" to storage. You are able to search almost whatever you want to know. (Yes, many areas are yet to be improved but it has been very useful for most people)

Indeed, those 2 advantages aren't those fancy ones people always imagine. Those tools are just a method to extract more source of thoughts. Useful or not? That's not technology decides. Human does.

Tag!! Beyond Barrier Blog Weblog