Postsecondary Play: The Role of Games and Social Media in Higher Education

12. How Much Technology Is Enough?

steven weiland Wedonotthinkofthemechanicalclockasanadvancedformoftechnology,but its invention was one of Neil Postman’s favorite episodes in the mixed meanings of innovation. For the thirteenth-century Benedictine monks who invented it, the clock was to be used to regulate daily prayers. It worked so well that it soon became a device for synchronizing and controlling what people did far from monasteries. As Postman (1993) explains, a century after it appeared the clock allowed for scheduled work, industrial standardization, and economic transformation . “Without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible. And so, here is a great paradox: the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; and it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money” (15). The most important consequences of any technology do not become clear until many years after its introduction. In the case of this century, with the extraordinarily rapid pace of technological innovation and application, education is a scene of ferment and exhortation. Thus, as one account of the meaning of the “digital age” for schooling put it, “This is the time for educational visionaries to act” (Collins and Halverson 2009, 127). At the same time, responding to what, in their view, are unwelcome features of the new technologies like declines in attention and the reflective habits and knowledge-building features of reading, critics of “action” without a better understanding of its consequences see a different kind of urgency: “This is the moment, while the digital age is still young, to recoup these losses” (Powers 2010, 210). How Much Technology Is Enough? chapter twelve 284 what do we know about games? In what follows, the claims of leading advocates for technology-based educational reform—from K–12 through the postsecondary years—are presented as part of a debate they themselves barely recognize as having any interest for the students whose lives and work they intend to influence, and for college and university faculty and administrators who are under increasing pressure to reexamine their roles. The chapter begins with an account of the “new literacies” (or the “new media literacies”) and how they represent for their advocates the most compelling way that technology can redefine teaching and learning. The next section is devoted to the widely recognized demographic dimension of technology and education. Thus, the “Net Generation,” those born after 1990, is seen as an essential force in the realignment of educational values and practices , particularly in the preference for games and social media. Profiles of two successful students belie the belief that Net Generation experience is uniform in responding to what the latest technologies offer. The chapter’s third section isaimedatmakingaplaceinthisbookfortheviewsofthosewhocontestclaims for reform by technology, or who would stay its impact while faculty and students join in efforts to better understand what it will mean. For those worrying about learners of all ages encountering the increasingly digital world, reading and solitude—the subjects of the chapter’s fourth section—represent two forms of experience in particular need of attention. The section offers positions —“stewardship” and “partnership”—worth incorporating into relations between students and teachers. A fifth section continues in the vein of moderating the impact of technology, this time via the uses of history, or the experiences of exemplary figures who succeeded in mediating change in their time. The conclusion proposes that the interaction of new digital practices and criticism of them be seen first in the context of yet another feature of the postsecondary landscape—the uses of Open Educational Resources—and then, in the form of “technology education,” as an obligation that can be a fruitful part of teaching and learning in the transition to the digital age. This chapter is inspired by remarks by Mark Bauerlein and Sherry Turkle, two of the most insistent skeptics about claims made for the necessary applications of technology to education. From Bauerlein (2008a): “Digital technology has become an imperial force and it should be met with more antagonists.” And from Turkle (2010): “I think it is for a generation of professors to not be intimidatedandsay ‘Oh,thismustbethewayofthefuture.’”Andthechapterdisplays more faith in our current institutions—and prospects for modification according to technology rather than wholesale transformation—than is the case generallyinthoseseekingtoadvancetheroleoftechnologyineducation .ForJames how much technology is enough? 285 Gee and Elisabeth Hayes (2010), an influential team of game and social...