Matt’s Notes
Hey everyone! And welcome to our episode on too much tech in education! I can (fairly) say that I’ve seldom found a topic so weirdly mirthful as this… so kudos to Doug for choosing it… and thanks to you for checking it out!
59-59… (is not) the Number of the Beast! #ednontech
(Emails of) The Apocalypse
Er… that last heading may be a little… hyperbolic?
These emails have been sitting in my inbox for so long… I keep thinking I’ll find time to go through them thoroughly… or put them to (some kind of) use… and so… (entirely) in the interests of getting a few of these off the docket… don’t judge me too harshly…
Inside North Korea’s Forced Labor Program
I subscribe and then unsubscribe from email newsletters on the regular. I have yet to unsubscribe from The New Yorker. This story is from their Feb 25/24 newsletter.
I lived in South Korea for more than a year at the beginning of my teaching career, back in 2006. My kids’ mom is Korean. South Korea is one of the most dynamic, vibrant countries in the world… that I’ve experienced… and the border, the so-called “demilitarized zone” (DMZ) is one of the weirdest, spookiest places I’ve ever been…
This story is no doubt heartbreaking… as is the complicity of North American consumers in creating demand for cheap consumer goods from China… sigh… on second thought, I’m not going to delete this one after all…
How to Eat Like a Stoic
Anybody following this podcast or any of my social media knows my deep affinity for Stoic philosophy… particularly the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius…
Donald J. Robertson is an author and academic who has written several novel books on Marcus… including a graphic novel… and he also has a podcast and a Substack newsletter Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life… both of which are worth your time! And, come to think of it, the Substack newsletter is a pretty cool thing as a format, generally…
ANYWAY… this edition has some lively, informative historical info and commentary… and a recipe for “Stoic Soup”… however, I doubt given my general disposition against significant food preparation… that I will actually prepare this… awesome though it surely is! I don’t know if this makes me more Stoic or less… but the newsletter is definitely rad!
Blood Meridian Google Earth Map
Speaking of apocalyptic! Anyone who follows this podcast or my social media knows… how much I love Cormac McCarthy’s novels… and perhaps especially Blood Meridian. And so I learned about this very cool, Social Studies-esque rendering of more than 120 locations from across the southern US and deep into Mexico as described in the novel… this is AWESOME… not to put too fine a point on it… and it’s this kind of thing that keeps me subscribed to weekly summaries of the Reddit Cormac McCarthy page… among others!
[POEM] Bukowski – 2 p.m. beer
Speaking of Reddit! And some of my favorite authors!
Listen, you can say what you like about Bukowski. Many have. And there’s lots to criticize. I’ll agree to the gist of most of the criticism!
But it doesn’t change the fact that I dig it… unapologetically!
Click below to hear me reading this one! Or don’t!
20-20-20-4 (Hours to Go)
All I am saying is that I’ve recently been chatting with a medical doctor from Brazil… and the first rock band she really got into… before Nirvana… was Ramones!
If this is your first time or your hundred-thousand-something-th time… Road to Ruin will make you dance, (blitzkrieg) bop, shimmy, shout, shake… and possibly other symptoms… but only if you have a pulse!
Respect to those who’ve done something outstanding… in just about any field of endeavor… educational, punk, or otherwise!
Life is a Highway (of Doom!) #ednontech
Doug’s Notes
The danger of too much technology in Education
In short, students will not have a full and rich education without being able to develop competence in the use of computers and other forms of technology.
Daresh, J. C. (2006). Technology and school leaders: overdue or overload?. Journal of Thought, 41(1), 27-39.
Nowadays, most of the concerns for defining educational patterns are related to the fact that we are facing a situation of ‘information overload’, where mass communication, big data, 20 Rumors-Editorials and an indiscriminate proliferation of information constitute the principal layer of pedagogical experiences and mind-feeding. If some aspects of this overload reflect the contemporary potentiality of new devices and new infrastructures … we cannot consider this phenomenon to be one that is completely new.
by the dynamics of a network society and participatory culture to delineate a digital media ecosystem as productive learning environment for students and teachers.
Ciastellardi, M. (2013). Education Overload. McLuhan and the Quest for New Patterns in the Era of Total Surround. In Education Overload. From Total Surround to Pattern Recognition (pp. 19-24). UOC Press.
… increased usage of technology tools does not always lead to increased work productivity; rather, sometimes it actually can be counterproductive.
… cognitive load theory which posits that optimal learning occurs when an individual’s working memory is minimized so that long term memory can be facilitated (Sweller, 1988).
Karr-Wisniewski, P., & Lu, Y. (2010). When more is too much: Operationalizing technology overload and exploring its impact on knowledge worker productivity. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(5), 1061-1072.
Technology overload is described as “techno-stress” or “techno-invasion.”
Technology overload is a new phenomenon in the field of human-computer interactions.
Rasool, T., Warraich, N. F., & Sajid, M. (2022). Examining the impact of technology overload at the workplace: A systematic review. SAGE Open, 12(3), 21582440221114320.
Word of the Podcast
Overload
Question of the Podcast
How can we appraise all the impacts of technology usage in educational settings? When is too much too much?
Phrase of the Podcast
Don’t expect that to be permanent, friends.
You need to get a wooden stake and hammer it through the heart.
If we (somehow) survive the incipient techno-pocalypse, rest assured you can (probably) count on us to open our bunker gates for you!
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