Introduction
In the following paper, I have my purpose to summarize the article “Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age” written by Cathy Davidson. In addition, I will offer my comments concerning selected aspects of the use of technology in the classroom, identify some relevant areas where technology will influence the educational process and suggest my vision of the way education will be affected by technology in the future. Cathy Davidson, the author of the article, is a Humanities Professor and former Vice Provost at Duke University (Burk 2011). Professor Davidson’s primary purpose in this article seems to convince the reader that modern technologies are very important to help humanity to reach new horizons in the area of the educational process.
Article Summary
The professor begins her article relating a very intriguing experience from her life when she realized what it means that the human brain has the characteristic of attention blindness and the way this characteristic affects the person’s performances and achievements. Davidson explains that in the twentieth century the education was based on the idea that the student should be focused on one particular task and may shift one’s attention to the other task only in case the previous one is finished. However, she believes that this approach deprives students of achieving more. She tried to prove this supposition experimentally.
In 2003 the professor was approached by the representatives from Apple Company with the proposal to participate in the development of iPod technology’s use in class. The experiment was designed for the first-year students so they were provided with free iPods; however, the rest of the senior students were left without such a desired gift. Little did the organizers realize that time, that this became the moving power of the experiment as the rest of the students started finding a way to receive their own free iPod. Every student desiring to have the device was offered to propose one’s own strategy of the use of iPod in class. This became a sensation as to have an iPod the students developed the most interesting conceptions of applying this technological device which supported the idea that destructing attention on numerous tasks is beneficial for the development of the educational process.
Inspired by the success of the experiment with the iPod, the professor initiated a new experiment which was the studying course called “This Is Your Brain on the Internet” for all the students willing to participate in it. Each student was to contribute or amend an entry on Wikipedia or any other public knowledge forum. The research indicated that the students with the most varied abilities and performances got better results in their writing than in their academic papers. Davidson explains that this suggests that young people are motivated with the desire to impress the public more than with the idea to get a good mark from the teacher. The professor explained the reasons for the course’s success:
If constant public self-presentation and feedback are characteristics of a digital age, why aren’t we rethinking how we evaluate, measure, test, assess, and create standards? Isn’t that another aspect of our brain on the Internet? That democratizing of who can pass judgment is digital thinking (Davidson 2011).
“This Is Your Brain on the Internet” studying course was projected to develop a different way of experiencing the universe; one that offers alternative forms of partnership and teamwork.
Critical Reflections
The primary purpose of this article seems to inform the readers about success that was achieved in the area of applying technologies in education and encourage them to think about the opportunities such an approach opens for the future. Numerous statements by Davidson seem to express this. For example,
Given the interactive nature of most of our lives in the digital age, we have the tools to harness our different forms of attention and take advantage of them. I want to suggest a different way of seeing, one that’s based on multitasking our attention—not by seeing it all alone but by distributing various parts of the task among others dedicated to the same end. Multitasking is the ideal model of the 21st century, not just because of information overload but also because our digital age was structured without anything like a central node broadcasting one stream of information that we pay attention to at a given moment. On the Internet, everything links to everything, and all of it is available all the time (Davidson 2011).
Statements such as these prove that the use of technology in the classroom is a very successful tool able to get numerous students really interested in education and include them into it stipulating much progress in this area. Reasoning on the results of the researches conducted by the professor, it becomes evident how significant is the use of modern technology in the classroom. I believe this process will only continue in the future helping humanity to get to unlimited horizons of progress.
Conclusion
The article raises the possibilities and issues that are rife with the question of the implementation of the latest technologies in the classroom. Davidson presented significant facts that the use of the Internet, the public blog system it offers, modern conveniences as iPod in the classroom are a sure way to succeed in the development of education in the twenty-first century It appears, though, that Davidson’s main goal was to convince the reader that modern technologies are very important to help humanity to reach new horizons in the area of the educational process.
References
Burk, J. (2011). Two interesting articles on the effects of technology in the classroom and distraction. New Westminster Mac Users.
Davidson, C. (2011). Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age. The Chronicle of Higher Education.