On the front page of the NYTimes is an article about the role of technology and student learning/teacher’s teaching. The article has an alarming affect, I was nervous about my use of the nets and computer devices as soon as I reached the bottom of page one. And then I continued. The author, Matt Ritchel, cites some neuroscientists who believes that the internet isn’t as harmful as TV and that multi-tasking is stimulating for the brain.

Nonetheless, educators in the article say that high schools are being corroded by technology, teachers are caught in the middle, as Ritchel puts it, “…computer or homework? Immediate gratification or investing in the future?”

As an instructional technology fellow at Macaulay Honors College at CUNY and someone who’s taught classes at Hunter college, I’m also in the middle. I think that engaging students’ lay wisdom of technology, their dexterity in multi-tasking and quick response could be a good platform to innovate education.

However, I also think that its harder for teachers to carry out traditional lesson plans with long reading and homework because the generation of ADD just can’t sit still. For the most part,I’m not also sold to the idea of online-ing classrooms, making face to face teaching and learning time obsolete. I’m not sure why, I don’t love the idea of wholesale giving up my teaching to the nets. I suppose education on the internet is of great interest to the neoliberal university, and the shrinking of an intellectual public is a part of neoliberal  ideology (ala Jurgen Habermas) but outside of those initial reactions, I don’t have any deep political reasons for it (but I should).

So, I’m asking you, readers, help?