Tools of Engagement or Disengagement? J. Wesley Baker, Ph.D. Cedarville University 2006 CCCU Conference on Technology Cedarville University June 2, 2006.

Tools of Engagement or Disengagement?

J. Wesley Baker, Ph.D.

Cedarville University

2006 CCCU Conference on Technology

Cedarville University • June 2, 2006

Hope in Technology?

• Technologies typically carry contradictory tendencies

Uniformity Individuality

Technology & Values

• “Technologies are amoral”

• Difference between moral neutrality and value neutrality

• Technologies carry inherent values that shape culture

• Technologies have consequences

= “Technologies are value-free”

Understanding Values

• By examining the technologies our students consider essential to their lifestyle, we can see how the values promoted by those technologies are reflected in our students.

Which Technologies?

• What technologies have the most influence on our students?

The Web for Information

• “. . . the Internet, more than any other medium, allows readers to self-select” (Mindich, 2005, p. 33).

• Mindich (2005) notes “how personal the news has become. . . . E-mail, Instant Messenger, and countless Web sites give us a ‘daily me,’ tailored to our particular tastes” (p. 77).

The Web for Information

• egocasting – “the thoroughly personalized and extremely narrow pursuit of one’s personal taste” (Rosen, 2004-2005, p. 52).

• “The world of egocasting is a “world where we . . . can consciously avoid ideas, sounds, and images that we don’t agree with or don’t enjoy” (Rosen, 2004-2005, p. 67).

The Web for Information

• Sustein, Republic.com (2001) – “‘People should be exposed to materials that they have not chosen in advance. Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself’” (quoted by Rosen, 2004/2005, p. 68).

• “[O]ne of the most important functions of the press” may be “to bring people in contact with ideas that they do not agree with” (Mindich, 2005, p. 104).

Google

• These personalized technologies foster an impatience for what research demands. The more convenient our method of research, the weaker our resolve to meet the challenges posed by difficult and inconvenient methods of research. Aura now resides in the technological devices with which we access information (adapted from Rosen, 2004/2005, p. 70).

Social Networking

• “Real communities require a level of work, sacrifice, and accommodation that virtual ones do not always share” (Mindich, 2005, p. 90).

• “On the Internet, we are more likely to drop our virtual neighbors completely to get someone else who will agree with us” (Mindich, 2005, p. 91).

Social Networking

• “For [William A.] Galston, the ultimate problem with the Internet in terms of its civic and political ramifications is that its communities are so easy to exit” (Mindich, 2005, p. 91).

• Sunstein (Republic.com) “argues that our technologies—especially the Internet—are encouraging group polarization: ‘As the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving’” (quoted by Rosen, 2004/2005, p. 68).

iPods

• “Technologies like TiVo and iPod enable unprecedented degrees of selective avoidance. The more control we can exercise over what we see and hear, the less prepared we are to be surprised” (Rosen, 2004/2005 p.67).

• Rosen (2004/2005) refers to such technologies as the remote control, TiVo and iPods as “ultra-personalized technologies” (p. 64).

iPods

• “[B]ecause the iPod is a portable technology, just like the cell phone, it has an impact on social space . . . . Those people with white wires dangling from their ears might be enjoying their unique life soundtrack, but they are also practicing ‘absent presence’ in public spaces, paying little or not attention to the world immediately around them” (Rosen, 2004/2005, p. 66).

iPods

• Devices such as iPods and cell phones have “an increasing potential for immersing people in private as opposed to collective worlds” (Gergen, 2002, p. 230).

Cell Phones

• Rosen (2004) raises the question, “[H]ow has the wireless telephone encouraged us to connect individually but disconnect socially, ceding, in the process, much that was civil and civilized about public space” (p. 26)?

• “Today . . . being accessible means answering your cell phone, which brings you in contact with your caller, but ‘out of contact’ in the physical social situation” (Rosen, 2004, p. 39).

Cell Phones

• “Kenneth J. Gergen . . . has argued that one reason cell phones allow a peculiar form of diversion in public spaces is that they encourage ‘absent presence,’ a state where ‘one is physically present but is absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere’” (Rosen, 2004, p. 41).

Cell Phones

• The result, according to Kenneth Gergen, is “the erosion of face-to-face community, a coherent and centered sense of self, moral bearings, depth of relationship, and the uprooting of meaning from material context: such are the dangers of absent presence” (Gergen, 2002, p. 236).

Cell Phones

• Cell phones, etc., are “used as a means to refuse to be ‘in’ the social space; they are technological cold shoulders that are worse than older forms of subordinate activity in that they impose visually and auditorialy on others. . . . We have allowed what should be subordinate activities in social space to become dominant” (Rosen, 2004, p. 38).

Cell Phones

• “Our constant accessibility and frequent exchange of information is undeniably useful. But it would be a terrible irony if ‘being connected’ required or encouraged a disconnection from community life—an erosion of the spontaneous encounters and everyday decencies that make society both civilized and tolerable” (Rosen, 2004, p. 45).

Disengaging Effects

• “ultra-personalization” (Rosen’s egocasting)

• Emersion in one’s private world (Negroponte’s “Daily Me”)

• Selective reinforcement/selective avoidance

• Loss of unanticipated encounters and exposure to different ideas (Sustein, Republic.com)

Disengaging Effects

• Impatience for “messy” processes

• Reliance on the easy technological solution, rather than difficult personal effort

Disengaging Effects

• Loose connection to virtual communities (Galston)

• Refusal to be in social space; absorbed in the technologically mediated world

• Loss of connection to real, face-to-face communities (Gergen’s “absent presence”)

Emerging Technologies

• Concept Maps – Brain-based learning

• Wiki -- Creating a shared body of knowledge

Concept Maps

• Concept maps were developed by Joseph D. Novak in 1972 at Cornell University

• They are “based on the learning psychology of David Ausubel” (Novak & Cañas, 2006, p. 2).

Concept Maps

• Concept maps were developed by JosephD. Novak in 1972 at Cornell University

• They are “based on the learning psychology of David Ausubel” (Novak & Cañas, 2006, p. 2).

Concept Maps

• Learning takes place by assimilation of new concepts into learner’s existing cognitive structure.

• In constructing a concept map, “the learner or team of learners is very actively engaged in the meaningful building process, an essential requirement for meaningful learning to occur” (Novak & Cañas, 2006, p. 20).

Wiki

• Students are treated as incipient scholars

• Expected to make contributions to the shared body of knowledge

• Promotes teamwork in a real social setting

• Have to negotiate product

Resources

• Baker, J. W. (1995, August). Christians in a technological culture. Paper presented to the Faith-Learning Institute, Cedarville University, Cedarville, OH. Retrieved May 29, 2006, from http://people.cedarville.edu/employee/bakerw/integrat/techcltr.htm

• “Concept maps become educational tools.” 2005, July 10. Springfield News-Sun, [Associated Press wire service article], p. 8D.

• Gergen, K. J. (2002). Cell phone technology and the realm of absent presence. In D. Katz & M. Aakhus (Eds.), Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance (pp. 227-241). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Resources

• Levy, S. & Stone, B. (2006, April 3). The new wisdom of the Web. Newsweek, 147 (14), 47-50, 52, 53.

• Lum, C. M. K. (2006). Notes toward an intellectual history of media ecology. In C. M. K. Lum (Ed.), Perspectives on culture, technology and communication: The media ecology tradition (pp. 1-60). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.

• Mindich, D. T. Z. (2005). Tuned out: Why Americans under 40 don’t follow the news. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

• Negroponte, N. (1995). Being Digital. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Resources

• Novak, J. D. & Cañas, A. J. (2006). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct them. Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01. Pensacola, FL: Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Retrieved May 12, 2006 from http:// www.cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/RsearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.pdf

• Rosen, C. (2004, Summer). Our cell phones, ourselves. The New Atlantis, No. 6, pp. 26-45. Retrieved May 29, 2006, from http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/6/TNA06-CRosen.pdf

Resources

• Rosen, C. (2004, Fall/2005, Winter). The age of egocasting. The New Atlantis, No. 7, pp. 51-72. Retrieved May 29, 2006, from http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/7/TNA07-Rosen.pdf

• Weaver, R. M. (1948). Ideas have consequences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Whiteley, S. (2005). Memletics concept mapping course. [Grayslake, IL]: Advanogy.com. Available from http://www.memletics.com/mind-concept-map-course/default.asp