1. What does it (the medium or technology) extend? In the case of a car it would be the foot, in the case a phone it would be the voice.
2. What does it make obsolete? Again, one might answer that the car makes walking obsolete, and the phone makes smoke signals and carrier pigeons unnecessary.
3. What is retrieved? The sense of adventure or quest is retrieved with the car, and the sense of community returns with the spread of telephone service. One might consider the rise of the cross-country vacation that accompanied the spread of automobile ownership.
4. What does the technology revert into if it is over-extended? An over-extended automobile culture longs for the pedestrian lifestyle, and the over-extension of phone culture engenders a need for solitude.
For your blog post, pick one of the instructional technologies discussed in the report and answer McLuhan's tetrad questions from a teaching and learning perspective.
________The Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 discusses mobile devices as a technology that may be adopted in the next few years by elementary and secondary teachers and learners. This technology allows the user to extend many areas of the body; voice, sight, sound, and even the brain. Mobile devices allow you to communicate with individuals over great distance using its' voice and text capabilities. As these devices have evolved, they also begin to extend our brains by providing additional skills such as greater navigation with capabilities like GPS, and instant access to many answers via the web. Teachers can leverage these capabilities in various ways, whether it is example based explanations of how satellites orbit around the earth, or having students perform research on the web in a classroom without computers.
With these new or enhanced capabilities, other resources and technologies become obsolete. Letters and cards sent through the postal service, also known as snail mail, have been impacted by the ability to quickly send a message via a computer or mobile device. Map reading has been replaced by a voice coming from your mobile device, telling you when to turn. Even computers are being replaced due to the low price point and portability of such devices. On a social level, face to face communication is being replaced with text messages and emails. Failure to learn such basic life skills have the ability to impact a learner in other ways. An example of this would be if a student wants to become a surveyor or structural engineer, map reading is a crucial piece of knowledge that is required to fulfill the job.
The usage of mobile devices offers the user the feeling of instant access to information, people, and places. As more and more third party applications and capabilities become available, mobile devices are becoming a one stop shop to meet the needs of the user. Students and teachers can access online communities and express themselves, as well as meet like minded people all over the world. Such technology has brought back early communications like having a pen pal, except with a virtual twist. On devices like the iPhone, the action of typing is given a sound as if you were typing on an old typewriter and digital clocks are displayed as if they are analog.
If the use of mobile devices becomes over-extended, physical interaction may become more desirable in place of the virtual interaction experienced when using such devices. The desire for high quality video and audio may return, instead of the small compact screens being viewed on mobile devices. People may begin to long for a more spontaneous life that isn't managed up to the minute at the click of a button. For teachers and learners, the technology may be used to recreate a standard classroom and book based learning scenario. Appreciation for physical v.s virtual may become a more prominent piece of teaching, such as visiting a museum or performing a real experiment in a lab.
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