Anyway, a student responded with a great comment, and part of her comment was that:
"I totally agree with Jared that blogging and communication through computers escalates the amount of time spent away from others in a conference or socializing setting. I find myself falling into this trap. It is easier for me to write an email to my friends than to call them on the phone"
Did you catch the "transparent technology?" She said computers keep us from socializing face to face, and then she gives the example of emailing instead of calling someone on the phone. But isn't using a phone a technology? Talking on the phone isn't socializing face to face, but we think it is. We all feel this way, I'm sure, to some degree. Why is this so? Why is email, blogs, or discussion boards a "new," "radical," and "unnatural" way of talking to each other when phones aren't? Either way, we're not actually face to face.
The point I'm making is that after a technology has been around long enough that we have all adopted it, it becomes transparent. That means we don't even notice it's there. Many people don't even consider audiotapes or videotapes a technology anymore, and teachers don't have any hesitation using these technologies, but they won't touch computers (sometimes). But someday, the new technologies of today -- like wikis, for example -- will become transparent too.
As technologies get more and more transparent, it's easier to use them in the classroom because you don't have to teach the students how to use them. For example, all students know how to take a picture, so using cameras would be an easy technology to use. While I'm a huge fan of new and exciting technologies, we shouldn't ignore the transparent technologies that might be easier to use and could still be effective.
That said, I've told some of you that I want your wikis to be about "new" technologies. Transparent technologies are great, but we already know all about them. In your group projects the rest of this semester, focus on learning new technologies that may become transparent to the younger generation very quickly, maybe even by the time you graduate and start teaching ...
