Modern technology often creates distractions in the classroom, a panel said at Harvard University on Wednesday.
The lecture, “No More Teachers? No More Books? Higher Education in the Networked Age,” featured guest speakers from colleges and universities and the information technology industry who discussed how technology and new media are affecting education in front of an audience of about 50 professors and Harvard community members.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology social studies of science and technology professor Sherry Turkle said technology-based multitasking can have negative effects on the learning process.
She also said students need to be in control of distractions in order to absorb what they are taught in the classroom.
“When students text in class and keep laptops open, they learn less,” she said.
Director of the Harvard University Library Robert Darnton said he believes society is suffering from an overload of information, leading to a period of tremendous confusion.
“We haven’t got it solved yet,” Darnton said. “We need guidance, and teachers will make all the difference in attempting to navigate this confusing world.”
Director of Technology for Google Craig Silverstein said the role of the university is to engage critical thinking and evaluate information in an intelligent way amid an excess of unreliable sources.
“It’s not that there’s more bad information; it is becoming more prevalent,” he said. “There is a megaphone on it.”
Suffolk University lecturer Mitchell Weisberg said he agreed with the panel members’ assertions about students needing to understand the way information is obtained and delivered to them.
“Students risk acting on lower quality information,” he said. “Google prioritizes by social vetting, and students depend on fact-delivered information as vetted on academic and intellectual expertise.”
Darnton also brought up the problem of reading and comprehension in the age of Internet.
He said that since the experience of reading will be digital in the future, the nature of reading is bound to change dramatically as the medium changes.
“People are reading in short chunks, not cover-to-cover,” Darnton said. “Rather than pursuing a line of thought deeply, sustaining attention will become a problem. Old-fashioned books lend themselves to slower, meaningful reading.”
However, Berkman fellow David Weinberger, who has authored three books, said he understood why some might find books to be less comprehensive and convenient to read than content on the Internet.
He said books could be a disconnected, hard-to-follow medium, while Internet hyperlinks are based on connectivity, which can both help and hinder the education process.
“Links are a new type of punctuation that tells us to continue and how,” he said. “We have to navigate and find our way to the truth.”
Harvard Extension School student and high school teacher Vera Ventura said the topic of the panel is so pertinent and prevalent that it is reaching academia.
“Teachers, professors and instructors have to work in this new medium and figure out how we work in that environment,” Ventura said.
Internet helps but also hinders learning, professors say
Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009
Updated: Thursday, November 19, 2009
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