Platforms designed to help students and teachers learn by using the Cloud to interact, connect and share education content, methods and services such as tutoring, accessing school notices on social and other events, and networking about jobs, graduate school and other information related to learning. As such education networks are becoming virtual communities enabling members to migrate more and more to the Cloud where they can share information, including personal data, such as homework; take online open courses, webinars and workshops; play education video games and engage in other such educational activities.
Published in Chapter:
A Media Interpretation of the Negative Impact of Cloud Technologies
Michael S. Tang (University of Colorado – Denver, USA) and Arunprakash T. Karunanithi (University of Colorado Denver, USA)
Copyright: © 2016
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-9924-3.ch024
Abstract
This chapter presents a media studies interpretation of the impact of Cloud communication technologies on traditional academic achievement. According to social media critics following the “medium is the message” theory of Marshall McLuhan, the hidden “message” in the new Cloud communication education technologies conflicts with the old message of the printed textbook, the traditional medium of communication in education since the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries. The chapter begins with a brief history of media technologies in education to gain understanding into the nature of this conflict and follows with a review of research and studies that document the conflict's cause and consequences with the conclusion that a major factor in the proliferation of any new media communication technology is its commercial value. Moreover, because new technologies in education are driven by commercial interests, its pedagogical value becomes secondary resulting in what social media and other critics view as the dumbing down of the American student. These social media critics contend that not only have American students been declining intellectually, computer technologies, including the Cloud Internet communication technologies are the direct cause of this decline, raising the question, “is education technology an oxymoron?” Given this analysis of media communication technologies' impact on education, the authors then offer a possible way out of the current situation by proposing a more human factors approach towards Cloud technologies based on constructivist educational and cognitive styles theory.