The image below was published by Isaac Asimov in Future Days: A view on the year 2000 from the point of view of the XIX century, painted by Jean Marc Cote in 1889.
What does the image suggest as regards the relation between technology and education? What view of learning and teaching does it imply? What role does the teacher give to technology in education? Any other comments or ideas??
Reflecting on our role as Teachers 
I don´t know why and it is difficult for me to explain it but I didn´t like the picture. I think that the artist imagined the education in the future as only transmission of knowledge but with the help of thechnology. In the picture, students seem to be robots that are receiving the knowledge in a mecchanical way. I think that the picture is according to that age in which pupils were seen as blank sheets which had to be filled with contents.
I agree with Monica. Some kind of machine filling the students´mind with only academic knowledge,as there is no interacction among sts, no teacher job and no teacher commitment to his role in the class, as he is not even looking at their sts. Some time many teachers would like to have a machine like this to ìnsert`some thing to our sts , specially after done all our best to make some of them understand someting and found no results.( thoug I seriously think some casea ar lack fo studying).
I also think his viwe of the future was not so far away from reality, because if we think of our sts sitting in front of a computer all day, eyes fixed on the screen, there is someting that thay learn, pity it´s not what we want.
Thanks for the image! I was trying to picture it in my mind from what my partners had said, and I totally agree. What first grabbed my attention was the fact that the human function there was only to put the books inside the machine and make it work. Is that some kind of factory or a classroom? I think that the author´s view was that technology was going to be invading our world so that human monitoring wouldn´t be needed anymore. That view would make children, teenagers, and students in general machines too! They would go to “school” just to listen to a cd, watch a video, or use a computer, memorize that knowledge and that is the end of the story. That´s very far from what we call teaching and learning. We belong to a society, education is a part of it, and members within a group, society, school, work, etc must interact, if not we are loosing our social characteristics.
I think that the author imagined the technology in the classroom as a kind of machine filling in the pupil’s mind,they had to stay motionless, the teacher had to put the books inside the machine,it was her/his role and there was no interaction among them.As regards technology in the classroom,I consider that it is an important tool for the students to improve their daily work but the teacher must be aware of the fact that she/he has to help the students to develop different skills and as Daniela said,we belong to a society,interaction is essential so the teacher must consider the technology as a shared social experience and it helps the students to develop collaborative skills.
What a horrible picture! I think that the teacher is a kind of chemist that is providing the students the new information through a machine putting books on it and the students are like robots that receive the information.
if we have to establish a relation between technology and education looking at this picture I can say that the teacher only wants to incorporate information on the students’ brains but he does not interact between them, the author tries to shows us that computers are doing this with our children, so we have to be cautious and we have to know when we will use technology in our classroom and we always have to think on our objectives first.
Thanks for the image! I think that the person who draw this picture wanted to show us that the role of the education is just to give information to students. The machine in which the teacher puts the books, makes all the work. It seems to be that no teacher is needed because the machine tranfers all the information students require. The artist also wanted to show us that technology is the main aspect for this kind of education. He/she wanted to make us aware of the excessive use of technology in education. Of course, that is not the idea of the education. Interaction between teachers and students is the most important aspect of real education. Otherwise, education without schools or teachers would be possible. And we know that is not part of our reality.
The picture shows a total lack of interaction and communication between the students and the teacher. And what about all the articles and videos on “reflection” we’ve been working on? Of course, I think the author imagined a 2000 with very advanced technology. I also saw other images by the same author and he painted people with rollers (when they still didn’t exist), animals flying. Many people, even nowadays, associate technology with with a “chip” which annuls all our natural abilities. And I think it is our duty as teachers to exploit students’ abilities and to use technology as one of the various tools which can be applied in the teaching and learning process.
According to this picture, the future brings a mechanized version of knowledge where the student is seen as a passive agent who learns in a decontextualized environment. Apart from that, this picture reflects the basic paradigm of the traditional didactics in which the learning process, the interaction among students and between them and the teacher are not taken into account. Perhaps the teacher just takes it for granted that this kind of ‘programmed’ model will work well for everyone involved.
Nowadays, things are very different from what the image shows as the use of technology in a learning situation involves psychological, linguistic, cognitive, social and cultural areas.
Good point!
This picture reminds me of one theory we have learnt, Behaviourism. I perceive that these students learn through mechanical techniques and do not reflect on the activities that the professor gives them, they just receive new knowledge though the machines, repeat drills or what they hear ( like parrots!) or perhaps they do not speak but they are ‘equipped’ with new words. Where is the role of the teacher here? Where is the communication among them? And where is the interaction among the students, teacher and language itself? I can’t see anything…Even though technology is useful to help the students understand another foreign language I think that teachers must take into account that nowadays they are the ‘motivators’ of their students’ interests, not only the ones who prepare the lessons and explain meanings to them but also the facilitators of transmitting a second language inside a communicative context. Their role as teachers has to do with using and interacting with these machines, and avoid their manipulation in the classroom.
I hope all of you remember all this when you’re teaching.
The idea of this new century is implied in the picture. In my opinion, I don´t like the picture because the author tries to describe education in the future by considering the students as machines.I don´t believe that this new century has brought that kind of characteristics. It is a fact that education has changed and technology has been considered a very important tool because It helps students to develop various abilities. But I think that we should use technology as another tool. Of course, we have to adapt our lessons according to this tool but we don´t have to include it as the only tool of our classes. It is a way of innovating and it increases positively our methodology but we can´t avoid the fact that interaction is one of the main features as regards education.
To begin with, this image makes me think about a song by Pink Floyd “Another brick in the wall”, do you know it? Children like machines, empty clones. It definitely has to do with Behaviourism. The teacher “fills the children´s minds with knowledge without taking into account their feelings and experiences. Obviously, when Jean Marc Cote painted this image, he thought that, by the year 2000, it would be easier to teach students with the help of technology. All the teacher´s work done by a machine transferring data from books into students´ minds, as if they were computers! I think this image shows what people thought about education in those days. Nowadays, we know that technology can be, and should be used as a tool to interact with the students and their everyday world.
In my opinion all the resources (both human and non-human ones) in a lesson are important.By far the use of technology has become one of the most attractive elements in any kind of lesson :students these days are bombarded with and seduced by a great number of technological devices an applications they seem to find irresistible.
However, what this anecdote seems to illustrate is that the use of technology in the classroom can not ensure the success of a lesson without the intervention of a teacher .It is the teacher’s presence, assistance, guiding role that is needed to arouse students’ interests to use and enjoy a lesson based on the use of some ICT.
The teacher who assumed that the lesson would evolve normally, even if he was not there, just by relying on the use of some videotaped material failed to aknowledge that the vital role any teacher performs in any lesson : The TEACHER guides,motivates,assists,encourages his/her students in their learning process .Apart from that a good teacher should not only motivate students to learn ,but he also should teach them how to learn ,in a relevant ,meaningful and memorable way.
First of all I agree with my classmates and I liked the appreciation Evangelina did relating the image with “Another brick in the wall” by Pink Floyd. The first word that comes to my mind is BEHAVIOURISM. Learners considered as empty sheets that had to be filled in with the teacher information who was the authority. But it was useless, because the language can only be learnt if it is used in a meaningful way. If we choose technology for our lessons it should be used didactically, with a clear purpose, not just for fun or to make make students repeat what they have heard or seen from us. I know it is not an easy task but please don´t become like the teacher in the picture.We have many tools at our hand, let´s use them but consciously and taking into account that we are teaching people not machines.
It is an interesting point of view according to the period in what the picture was done. The author imagined that to this new millennium it would be “easy” teach, the teacher would need only introduce the books in a machine and it would transmit the contents. the students and the teacher would be pasive in the learning process.
But nowadays, we Know that technology is an important tool and students love use it. Teachers should know how to use it in order to have a purpose and be meaningful for them .
On observing the picture, I realise that people from centuries ago considered technology as machines with wires that would pass knowledge to students just by clicking a button without the teacher’s intervention or cooperative work. So, I asked myself… How was education carried out in the past? What was the teacher’s role those days? Nowadays, technology is part of our lives. Children are born technological. This is the reason why we as “adults” and “teachers” are required to be updated in order to fit in this era and not been left behind. Contrary to what the picture reflects, technology is a useful resource in classes. Teachers should assume responsability for involving themselves on how to use and adapt this new tool in the learning process.
I think that the author of this painting made an erroneous prediction of how education could be like at this time. Let´s have in mind that the concept of tabula rasa was fully fixed in those times. The fact that children’s minds were simple empty containers needing to be filled with knowledge was openly accepted as an irrefutable truth.
The author´s imaginarium suggested him that technology could “simplify” teacher´s work, by just creating a direct line from him to the student in order to transfer knowledge, asi if this one would be a stuff, transmittable or conveyable according to the current demands.
We should be thankful for the twist of the history, in which technology does not replace neither the teacher nor knowledge, and even the the migration of contents itself is not quite so, but a complex and intricate network that involves two people, both in active roles.
Looking at this painting we can undersantd that the person who did it thought of educating children as if they were empty buckets that we have to fill up with information, in this case, with the help of technology.
I think it is an old appreciation of education and it is important to be aware that this is not how it works. People are not empty sheets that need to be filled with information and they are not robots. Putting on headphones and listening to someone talking is completly meaningful, in this way, students would learn nothing.
It is great to include technology but as a tool to investigate, learn, and critisize. Not to use it as if we were all robots, as the painting presents children.
What the future brings is not what the picture represents; in my opinion, the author imagines that technology is going to take control of our thoughts by introducing information in our minds automatically like machines, as if students’ brains will be containers to fill in with information.
In the picture the teacher has a passive role, he thinks that with that method students will learn. Nowadays, things are very different, fortunately; technology is part of our lives but we need our knowledge to use it.
This image is showing when students were considered as containers into which teachers poured information. . The students had a passive role. Nowadays, we know that students can express their ideas, make questions and verbalize their points of view. If we want children to develop certain language skills, we need to ensure they have experiences in classes that will help them build those skills. On the other hand, even the most motivated child can have problems making sense of some of the activities in which they are asked to become involved. Teachers should take notice of their student’s understanding. We know that technology is important for teaching,but recognizing that the teacher is responsible for guiding their students.
With this image, the author represented the idea that tecnology would somehow transform education for bad, suggesting that the knowledge would be transmited in a much mechanized way.
Although it is a controversial image, I must say nowadays technology plays an important role in education. It is a very useful teaching tool when it comes to planning or delivering a lesson. And it is undoubtedly an aspect that crosses the current life of children and society in general. We live in the era of techology, and as teachers we have to be updated enough to implement it successfully in our classrooms.