seminar
Never Send a Man to Do a Machine’s Job: Reconsidering the Human-Machine Relationship in Education
Sir
Winston Churchill once said "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."
Technologies we have created have also dramatically shaped our world. By
reducing distance, enabling mass participation, and expanding human needs and
capacities, technology has a created a new world that presents both new
challenges and opportunities for our students-future residents of this new
world. And education must act to prepare our children to competently meet these
challenges and take advantage of the opportunities.
In
this presentation, Dr. Yong Zhao suggests that the misalignment of technology
and human beings in the learning process has been the primary reason for the
failure to realize the full potential of technology. Yong Zhao discuses how we
need to reconsider the relationship between technology and human teachers in
schools. In order to harness the power of technology, we need to realign the
capacity of technology and human beings to provide a more healthy education
ecosystem in which children are supported to realize their individual potential
and develop their strengths.
<p>Yong Zhao is currently Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for
Global Education, <a href="http://education.uoregon.edu/path.htm?setpath=19" target="_blank">College of Education</a> at the <a href="http://uoregon.edu/" target="_blank">University of Oregon</a>,
where he also serves as the director of the <a href="http://cate.uoregon.edu/" target="_blank">Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE).</a> He is a fellow of the <a href="http://www.iaoed.org/" target="_blank">International
Academy for Education</a>.</p>
<p>Until December, 2010, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished
Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also
served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology,
executive director of the <a href="http://experiencechinese.com/" target="_blank">Confucius
Institute</a>, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational
Excellence.</p>
<p>His research interests include educational policy, computer
gaming and education, diffusion of innovations, teacher adoption of technology,
computer-assisted language learning, and globalization and education.</p>
<p>Zhao has extensive international experiences. He has consulted
with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in
many countries on six continents. His current work focuses on designing 21st
Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution.</p>
<p>Zhao has published over 20 books and 100 articles. His most
recent books include <a href="http://shop.ascd.org/Default.aspx?TabID=55&ProductId=1095" target="_blank"><em>Catching
Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization</em></a> and the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Asian-Education-Cultural-Perspective/dp/080586444X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1293871880&sr=8-3" target="_blank">Handbook
of Asian Education</a>. He has also developed computer
software, including the award-winning <a href="http://enterzon.com/" target="_blank">ZON</a> (http://enterzon.com), the world's first massively multi-player online
role-playing game for studying Chinese.</p>