A Reflection on " Locking Up the Web," by Lance Ulanoff, and "Charlotte's Webpage," by Lowell Monke.

Lance Ulanoff brings up important ideas concerning the idea if how educational research and news should be used, credited, or paid for. Reading on how publications have little choice but to look for new sources of revenue seems to follow the idea that writers, researchers, and contributors to new articles don't want to just get credited for their work. Even for that matter, maybe its the websites and newspapers that produce the information and research, they just don't want to give out information, probably they want to keep the ownership of the information that the put out.

Reflecting on the idea of independent website having anonymous information or research, why fee? Ulanoff mentions that library research is more dependable than a lot of web research, but he says that the web has became the best source of information. The trouble with online research Ulanoff says that trusted news sources are more dependable on sourcing or finding a reference, while on the other hand, second-hand information from a personal website don't have credentials. I know that you could probably find more information on the web, but using a concrete source like a library book is probably better according to Ulanoff.

I believe the issue for the lock up, on information, is to protect information and research from leaking out onto independent websites that use that information. The idea of cut and paste as William Gibson talks about in his article "God's Little Toys," refers to the idea of how vital information is towards learning education and research, in which other people are talking ideas and making it their own to create something 'new.' The idea Gibson grasps, is the idea about people using other people's ideas to making new one's, but won't that be called plagiarism?

According to Lowell Monke, in his article, "Charlotte's Webpage- Why Children Shouldn't have the world at their fingertips," he's worried about how education and information on computer is becoming vaguely misused. Students are not learning how to use a computer effectively, and they are being pushed away from the natural sense of learning from missing out on recess.
Monke says that through technology, like the TV and film, Monke says that, "Even the computer has not been able to show a consistent record of improving education."

In the article Monke quotes that, "There have been no advances over the past decade that can be confidently attributed to broader access to computers," said Stanford University professor of education Larry Cuban in 2001, summarizing the existing research on educational computing. "The link between test-score improvements and computer availability and use is even more contested." Part of the problem, Cuban pointed out, is that many computers simply go unused in the classroom. But more recent research, including a University of Munich study of 174,000 students in thirty-one countries, indicates that students who frequently use computers perform worse academically than those who use them rarely or not at all.

Maybe academically, students are not being taught how to research affectively on the web. Monke refers on what Neil Postman has observed in what he says, "What we need to consider about computers has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning." Learning the concepts of connective-ness from the computer and the real world shows different sides of what's important. Monke says that," Ironically, students could best learn the lessons implicit in Charlotte's Web—the need to negotiate relationships, the importance of all members of a community, even the rats—by engaging in the recess they missed. In a school, recess is not just a break from intellectual demands or a chance to let off steam. It is also a break from a closely supervised social and physical environment.” I believe that kids should to be educated through computers, but not at such an early age. I also believe that, how we use education through means of learning through computers, students should be guided on how to use the information that the web provides affectively. considering that, we now live in a world where computers are everywhere, we still have to become connected to our childhood experiences of learning, the physical sense.


I know that more kids are using computers today at a younger age, becoming less independent in the real world and more dependent on the use of computers. As Lowell Monke, I believe it is necessary for children at that certain age, before they hit fourth grade, to have recess so the can learn social skills in an active outside learning environment. Monke engages us to understand that kids need to touch and sense things that are around them. "Children learn the fragility of flowers by touching their petals. They learn to cooperate by organizing their own games. The computer cannot simulate the physical and emotional nuances of resolving a dispute during kickball, or the creativity of inventing new rhymes to the rhythm of jumping rope. These full-bodied, often deeply heartfelt experiences educate not just the intellect but also the soul of the child. When children are free to practice on their own, they can test their inner perceptions against the world around them, develop the qualities of care, self-discipline, courage, compassion, generosity, and tolerance—and gradually figure out how to be part of both social and biological communities."

I believe in the paragraph above, proves to be a vital point in which children need real world experiences, Monke believe that electronically experiences has given children a sense of what they want to see. The idea that Monke points out on belonging, he believes that is a very important aspect of how children learn. Engagement is important too, towards the roles of real life and electronic experiences in which Monke says, "There is a profound difference between learning from the world and learning about it. Any young reader can find a surfeit of information about worms on the Internet. But the computer can only teach the student about worms, and only through abstract symbols—images and text cast on a two-dimensional screen. Contrast that with the way children come to know worms by hands-on experience—by digging in the soil, watching the worm retreat into its hole, and of course feeling it wiggle in the hand. There is the delight of discovery, the dirt under the fingernails, an initial squeamishness followed by a sense of pride at overcoming it. This is what can infuse knowledge with reverence, taking it beyond simple ingestion and manipulation of symbols. And it is reverence in learning that inspires responsibility to the world, the basis of belonging. So I had to wonder why the teacher from the Charlotte's Web video asked children to create animated computer pictures of spiders. Had she considered bringing terrariums into the room so students could watch real spiders fluidly spinning real webs? Sadly, I suspect not. "

Based on the ideas of what we can get from the computer and the real world, there is always one that cannot give us what the other one can. Sometimes we can do things on the computer, that we can't do in real life, like having the fear of talking to someone face-to-face, like Monke's example of the high school students that didn't want to confront students that spoke a different language because they seem deferent. I believe in what Monke believes, that technology forces us to become less aware of learning what's right and wrong, and I believe that it also helps us to experience new ways of learning. I feel the same way Monke feels in which children are being pushed into becoming more manipulative towards things and people, and becoming more dependent on 'rules' in a sense, the from actual real life experiences. To say that technology might limit the learning process in some areas, I believe that we need computers to open new learning constructiveness towards communication. While at the same time, its important to understand how we interpret the world thought our collectiveness through real life, more than through cyberspace.


Reading/References:

-Gibson, William. "God's Little Toys." Wired Magazine/Wired.com. July 2005. 2 Nov. 2005. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.07/gibson.html.

-Monke, Lowell. "Charlotte's Web." Orion Magazine/Orion.com. Sept/Oct. 2005. 2 Nov. 2005. htt://www.oriononline.org/pages/on/05-5om/Monke.html.

-Ulanoff, Lance. "Locking Up the Web." PCMAG. COM. 16 April 2003. 2 Nov. 2005. http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=40463,00.asp.