Tools of Engagement or Disengagement

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Tools of Engagement or Disengagement?

• J. Wesley Baker, Ph.D.
• Cedarville University

2006 CCCU Conference on Technology Cedarville
University June 2, 2006
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Hope in Technology?

• Technologies typically carry contradictory
  tendencies

Uniformity
Individuality
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Technology Values

• Technologies are amoral
• Difference between moral neutrality and value
  neutrality
• Technologies carry inherent values that shape
  culture
• Technologies have consequences

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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.

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Which Technologies?

• What technologies have the most influence on our
  students?

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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).

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The Web for Information

• egocasting the thoroughly personalized and
  extremely narrow pursuit of ones 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 dont agree with or dont enjoy (Rosen,
  2004-2005, p. 67).

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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).
• One 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).

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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).

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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).

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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
  technologiesespecially the Internetare
  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).

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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).

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iPods

• Because 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).

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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).

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Cell Phones

• Rosen (2004) raises the question, How 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).

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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 lifean erosion of the spontaneous
  encounters and everyday decencies that make
  society both civilized and tolerable (Rosen,
  2004, p. 45).

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Disengaging Effects

• ultra-personalization (Rosens egocasting)
• Emersion in ones private world (Negropontes
  Daily Me)
• Selective reinforcement/selective avoidance
• Loss of unanticipated encounters and exposure to
  different ideas (Sustein, Republic.com)

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Disengaging Effects

• Impatience for messy processes
• Reliance on the easy technological solution,
  rather than difficult personal effort

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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 (Gergens absent presence)

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Emerging Technologies

• Concept Maps Brain-based learning
• Wiki -- Creating a shared body of knowledge

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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).

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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).

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Concept Maps

• Learning takes place by assimilation of new
  concepts into learners 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).

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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

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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/integ
  rat/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.

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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 dont follow the news. New
  York Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Negroponte, N. (1995). Being Digital. New York
  Alfred A. Knopf.

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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/RsearchPaper
  s/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.thenewatla
  ntis.com/archive/6/TNA06-CRosen.pdf

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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.thenewatla
  ntis.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-conce
  pt-map-course/default.asp

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