Nature or Nuture; appropriate technology as tool or content?

Reflecting upon the articles "What Is Meaningful Learning?" "Preparing Students for eLearning" and "Digital Literacy: How it affects teaching practices and networked learning futures" it seems that the authors highlight a debate between form and content that learning may take.

Pearson, in "What Is Meaningful Learning?" highlights some of the characteristics of human learning, specifically focusing on five areas that facilitate the acquisition and appropriation of knowledge. Specifically, these characteristics are identified as: Active, that is, humans explore and interact with their environment and learn from that environment. Constructive, here meaning that people not only come to new understandings of their environments but can organize and articulate the concepts they have internalized through their learning. Intentional, meaning that human beings seek to achieve particular ends through their learning. Authentic, here this means that students can relate the information they have gained in a form that is relevant to their context. Cooperative which in this case means that learners do not operate in an environmental vacuum, but rather that they learn best when working in concert with other learners; comparing and adding to the pool of best practices which multiple people have discovered. These characteristics are vitally inter-related in this model.

Pearson then examines the ways in which technologies aid in the process of education. I'm in agreement with this approach that technologies, whether advanced or primitive, only serve to enhance the experience of education; in and of themselves they are value-neutral. Like many tools, they represent an opportunity to be used productively and usefully and to great effect. Used ineffectively, or only to satiate the whims of those who use them, they can detract from the experience or even create the conditions for resistance to the educational process (i.e., some students may become so fascinated with the bulk of information available on the web that they cease being interested in mining for depth of knowledge and settle for broad sweeping generalizations, potentially filled with inaccuracy.)

The other two articles examine the role environmental factors in constructing appropriate and accessible learning environments. The article from networkedlearning examines factors that are specifically focused on creating a technologically appropriate environment in the Australian context. Here, an element that is never explicitly discussed, but is, I believe, inherent in this conversation, is the matter of economic viability of technologically driven learning. In examining issues like Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), we begin to see, at least from a pragmatic standpoint, the danger of having a learning environment that is radically dependent on cutting edge technology for maximum benefit. The implication here is that if a school/district/class can't afford even rudimentary equipment, it risks leaving its students exposed to a downward spiral with their ability to navigate in an ever more technologically advanced world. Put simply, such a spiral might appear like this: School can only afford minimal technological resources, students have to get by with technological resources that do not adequately prepare them for life in the 21st century, students do poorly in SC and HSC exams, funding gets cut to schools that don't do well, rinse and repeat. While the discussion of FOSS is a good starting point for such discussions, and well intentioned in its aims, very few business or educational environments have migrated to FOSS standards and so if students aren't equipped to deal with commercially standard software (i.e., Window$, etc.) then they may not be viable in continuing education or in the workplace. A more detailed discussion of opening technology to the poor, in whatever form they take and wherever they are found represents a rich potential for examination and discussion than can be explored here. Initiates like OLPC are starting points for creating educational environments that are as accessible to the rich Western nations as to the poor of the world. And technologically can, and in many instances has, leveled the playing field between the haves and have-nots of the world as globalization continues to deepen the connection between the worlds peoples.

The eLearning article I found to be more pragmatic in its approach, and in many ways represented just a re-hash of many of the themes from the Prenksy article. One useful aspect of the article, however, was its focus on the characteristics of a student who is prepared to undertake technological learning. Ultimately, I found this article to be once again too focused on questions of technological form versus content for my tastes.