Saturday, March 24, 2012

I found the notion of "Protected Spaces" in the KAIROS article to be very interesting, as it puts a term to a phenomenon that I'm sure we have all observed at one time or another in ourselves or each other. It's simply the tendency to shrug off blame, really. The "protection" that it claims really lies only in the eye of the beholder. Any student that fails to learn curriculum could blame the professor and vice versa, but it doesn't mean that either is correct in thinking as they do. Further complicating this relationship by placing technology as an additional medium between student and professor (or student and student) simply provides an inanimate scapegoat that either group could blame for the failures of a course.

Sorry, kind of just thinking about the idea here. The real value is in discovering how we release teaching, learning, and technology all from any protection and see them (and ourselves) as they are. Having nothing beyond question or reproach. But I guess that takes honesty with oneself and if we'd figured out how to that as a species then...well, things would be pretty different anyway.

1 comment:

  1. Glad I'm not the only one posting over spring break!

    I didn't quite understand what you meant here, but it reminded me of an experience with an online class where an entire segment of the coursework was buried two links back on blackboard and I didn't find it until the night before the first exam.

    Now I've noticed that most online courses have an "orientation" quiz on the first week, which requires students to find and explore the website. Is that kind of what you meant?

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