The Gods Must Be Crazy or Unfamiliar With Web 2.0

Technology is a tool that broadens the scope of possibility. Without the human mind behind it, however, there is no creativity, only programming. The importance of the tool is that it provides a window to the world. It gives us the opportunity to see and hear and experience (to a limited degree) almost instantaneously, the writings, thoughts, visions and news of the world. It allows us access to the world’s libraries, books and people. Nothing is far away; no one is a stranger and no culture hides with the possibilities of internet technology.

Technology is the tool that allows us to be creative by being able to access new data with which to work. We make new connections between old things or new things. We create seemingly new things through the connection of heretofore unrelated elements. New thinking is generated through new stimulus or seemingly new stimulus because of new access.

The mind, the individual, with his or her individual talents and short comings, is the raw material with which the educator works. That material, that person, remains a complex, fertile, as yet not fully understood, field of potential. The mind is subject to fluctuations of mood, chemistry, environmental factors, age, developmental level, physical/emotional variations, and even the personal response to a particular educator. Every person, every moment, every day is different.

It is the educator’s job to make the tools for accessing information useful to the minds he/she works with. It is up to the educator, to find ways to stimulate interest, motivation, creative thought. There are many tools with which to do this, but few are as impactful or exciting as the tools of Web 2.0 and 3.0. These tools are part and parcel of the new generation's environment, but they are less familiar (if familiar at all) to the prior generations who are the educators. This is the dilemma.

There was a film made some years ago Called "The Gods Must be Crazy. " It's about an Australian Aboriginial native who found a Coke bottle that seemingly fell from the sky. He’s never seen such a thing nor have any of his tribe. It turns out to be a very useful tool, so useful, infact that this small tribe who have never known "ownership" or anger or violence, now start to experience these things because of this new thing that is essentially, the new technology. Everyone wants it. But no one knows how to handle it. And, suddenly everything has changed. The native tries to get rid of the Coke bottle; but somehow it keeps comeing back. So he decides to walk to the end of the earth and throw it off, so they can go back to being the way they were. Somehow, it never happens and the adventures that he and his family get into during the journey bring them into more and more contact with new things, not less.

This film is available on UTube in its entirelty, but the part that interests me is the concept of how the coke bottle changed them, the natives. The bottle was just a bottle. It's impact on them, however, was extensive and ever widening.

So, here's the point. Educators have all sorts of tools at their disposal. They are only able to use those that they understand and find personally helpful. Students come from a different world, so to speak, where the language of the internet tools is simply part of their thinking. All tools are useful. All internet tools are useful. But you can't use them, or speak the language that a student needs if you don't understand the tools.