I hope everyone is enjoying their Memorial Day weekend!! I just came across an article on Edtechmagazine.com that caught my eye. It seems that e-book provider CourseSmart has developed a new technology aimed at monitoring student reading of textbooks. According to the article "Technology Tells Teachers If Students Do the Reading- or Not" by Corey Murray, teachers utilizing this technology will be able to receive generated individual student reports that supposedly show if students have completed assigned readings, any underlined or highlighted passages they may have made, and how many times students referred back to the text before an exam. The article showcases both the benefits and criticisms of this technology.
I'm all for incorporating technology into the classroom if it makes learning more effective, but this "Big Brother"ly approach just rubs me the wrong way. Besides informing schools of students' study habits, what real value is there in employing this technology. And who's to say that any information gathered from this "super e-book" will be accurate and reliable anyway? All educators know that students can be very crafty when they need to be. I'm sure every teacher has a student or two (or five) who would open up the e-book mark it up and leave it on just to make it look like they've been reading for two hours. Also, as the article points out, not every student would be highlighting and underlining notes in an e-book. Some might just work better with the old-fashioned pencil and pen method (I know I do!) Seems like this is just another gadget for a big company to make more money on, not something that's going to make any real contribution to student learning, in my opinion.
I agree... this is a tough issue. Benefits certainly exist with software that enables a teacher to monitor if a student actually reads the required text. It helps the educator to know exactly what is taking place during independent learning. However, the big-brother effect might just be a little too much. More importantly, I truly believe in working towards making students responsible for their own learning. This seems to take some of that ownership away from students, in that I would assume a student may do the reading because they know the teacher is "watching" versus doing the reading because they want to enhance their knowledge base.
ReplyDeleteI also agree. We can assign homework, projects, etc. to students and those that care and that want the help with produce. Those that don't, well, they just don't and sometimes they can't be helped. I'm not saying we shouldn't help all students and push them as educators, but at that point, what is more important? Nice blog post, Nicole!
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