Day 2--Random thoughts

Hmmmm…thinking. Hmmmm..thinking. It seems that two days of non-stop lecture on computers and hands on lessons drained my brain of its wet matter. I cannot think of anything but computers. I can’t help it because we do not even have breaks—I can’t call a working break a break. We are soaked in and bleeding out computers.

                     

The whole place is teeming with people sitting on lounges busy with their laptops. I am one of them too. Most of the participants are talking…even worried about what will be the result of their computer post test. There are those who already had their post test this evening. One of my co-teachers got excellent score. Our group, the ignoramus, will have our post test tomorrow and I expect to have a mediocre score. To tell the truth, I find it difficult to work under time pressure.

The speeches given by the directors yesterday seemed to be sinking in; it is just now that I figured out why the department is trying its best to catch up with technology: paradigm shift (there is that fancy term again). I will not attempt to muse about the whole idea; I am thinking about the role of the teachers.

This whole idea of a computerized classroom is giving the teachers’ the shivers. We cannot help but feel threatened because the possibility of a teacherless classroom is looming in our minds. Maybe it is not a teacherless classroom but a room less classroom, what ever...The possibility is scary: a roomless classroom, a teacherless classroom, a robot teacher, a paperless classroom, a limitless classroom, and the best of them all—a principal less school. (Not that I hate principals and particularly our principal.)

Imagine what the future would and all we are doing is just a preparation for this change. We are slowly and painfully preparing the foundation.

Of course there will be change in philosophy of education too. Though the catch word or the mantra being hmmm....hummed is that of a learner centered education but in reality the trend is towards a technology centered education.

What is troubling about this trend is the death of humanities subject (or humanities in education). During my college, humanities were limited to one literature and philosophy of man classes. Ideas like aesthetics are taking on different meanings now. Beauty is now described in technological language like pixels, editing, enhancement, file conversion etc. Music is now computer generated. It does not take that much theoretical knowledge to create music now, programming skills, an ear for beat, a thumping bass, digital sampling, human playback etc.

Discourse is now via social networking. Ethics is now depersonalized. Pornography, which used to be a hmmmm...so rare that even just a conversation about can be aorusing, is now desensitizing that even pupils talk about them as if they were cartoon series.

Hmmmm….

More tomorrow about this…I need to relax…maybe walk around the compound…or jump.