iJunk Science 4
At Psychology Today Blogs, Jim Taylor surveys the evidence and concludes that the two most important factors in successful schools are the affluence of the school district and the skill of the teachers
Nevertheless, as he points out, the current rage is tech, not teach. A nugget:
Why the fascination with iJunk? Follow the link for his take on it.
iJunk sales, of course, are part of it. The rest, I think, is magickal thinking augmented by a misdirection play, hope that glitzy iTois will somehow make up for poverty, hunger, underpaid and mistreated teachers, decaying buildings, and anything resembling public accountability for the public good.
September 25, 2013 at 11:09 am
The people pushing iJunk devices should shop and market where the poor do. Almost everyone has a smartphone at the market where I go. In a lot of cases it is their only connection to global networks. It changes nothing, is not transformative. If iJunk and devices did have some capability in this area we’d already be seeing some change, not things getting worse, which is what the real trajectory is. iJunk is more accurately described as an adornment of American society. Reminds me of the papers that come out once or twice a year, one a few weeks ago from UCLA on how one of the professors made a device that can be added to a smartphone and turn its camera into part of a mobile scanning electron microscope. Fantastico! Of course, poor kids can’t turn smartphones into scanning electron microscopes even if they had the parts and without the education and training, which comes from a life not mired in poverty, you can’t have the ability or even opportunity to use one.
September 25, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Hey! It is transformative!
Look at all those cool selfies and sex tapes. Where were they when I was growing up?
September 25, 2013 at 5:05 pm
What’s a selfie? Oh, “I see,” said the blind man as he picked up his smartphone and saw.
September 25, 2013 at 10:38 pm
Consider yourself transformed.