Comments

• • Anonymous@AU_anonymous_comments_user1

  

  Anonymous November 27, 2013 - 12:16pm

  Thank you for the powerpoint presentation. It gave me cause to reflect on K-12 education in Alberta and the challenges that we face. Technological affordances are just one of many necessary paradigm shifts in public education that have been slow in coming. I appreciate your candid perspective

  I agree that the functional and relational aspects of technological artefacts – their affordances – set limits on the possible interactions that can take place. Unfortunately in public education, quite often, any excuse not to be innovative is often deemed as the lesser of two evils. As these limits constrain our interpretations and uses of technologies in analyzable ways, the study of technological affordances is a study of limitations.

  In the day to day world of public education, agentic action in individual teacher practice and teacher preparation programs is not the norm. The tendency, (culture) has been to reject individual agentic capacity, for the greater good of maintaining the status quo; thereby minimizing the need to embrace significant change . Educators who are devoid of consciousness and the agentic capacity for decision making, are more often than not opposed to: customized, attainment based education; the development and integration of advanced technologies within the classroom; and the advancement of learner-centred principles and methods.  

  
  - Dermod Madden