​Teaching and Learning in the Information Age – an Overview

A required course in the program: Studies toward a Specialization Certificate in the educational use of Information & Communication Technologies.

This course will relate to how changes in the information landscape, and the use of computers in particular, influence education, and stress the question: Are these changes for the better?

*A large part of this course focuses on general cultural changes, and not specifically on Course Description:

In this course we will examine the goals of education in a society with easy access to vast resources of information. We will ask how the availability of tools that help us "think" and remember influences how we learn, and how we should teach. We will examine how information technologies have influenced business and leisure, and will attempt to determine whether this influence should also be felt in education.

Course Objectives: 

• To attempt to understand what it means to teach when the teacher has ceased to be the definitive source of knowledge.
• To examine the changing face of "literacy" in the information society.
• To become acquainted with the varieties of "text" available to us today.
• To understand the conflicting claims made about how "Google is making us Stupid".
• To examine how tools that further the social nature of knowledge influence learning.
   

Course Outline:

1. "Knowing" today
   • What is important to "know" today?
   • Content knowledge vs. Procedural knowledge
   • Do we want "answers" rather than "understanding"?
     • Bereiter, C., (2002). Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. (Chapter 1)
     • Sealy-Brown, J., Duguid, P. (2000): The Social Life of Information. (Chapter 1)
       
       
2. What does it mean to be literate today?
   • Beyond reading.
   • The advantages and drawbacks of "visual literacy".
   • Computational Literacy.
   • Who needs all these literacies?
     • Eshet, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13 (1),93-106.
     • Mioduser, D., Nachmias, R., Forkosh-Baruch, A. (2009): New Literacies for the Knowledge Society. International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education
       
       
3. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
   • Do we read differently today than before the internet?
   • Have we become addicted to "fast information" (as in "fast food")?
   • Do we want "answers" rather than "understanding"?
     • Carr, N. (2008): Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Atlantic Magazine)
     • Lanier, J. (2006): DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism (Edge Magazine)
       
       
4. Tools for learning and teaching
   • Information via the Internet – Search Engines vs. Catalogues – and what we learn from them
   • The influence of Web 2.0 on learning
   • Is that a fact? – The place of "facts" in learning today.
     • O'Reilly, T. (2005): What is Web 2.0?
     • Weinberger, D. (2007): Everything is Miscellaneous (Chapter 9 – Messiness as a Virtue)
       
       
5. What should we do about schools?
   • Do we need schools to learn?
   • Do pupils need to learn to use computers? (Is there a "digital native"?)
   • Does ICT dictate a particular method of instruction?
     • Egan, K. (): Getting it wrong from the beginning: The mismatch between school and children's minds (self-published on web)
     • Collins, A., Halverson, R. (2009): Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology (Chapters 2 & 3)
     • Tapscott, D. (1998): Growing Up Digital (Chapter 1)