BOOOOM and Ignorance in Technology.
I remember as a boy in the mid seventies watching the T.V series called Space 1999 . The premise of the series was that a horrible nuclear explosion caused the moon to drift away from the earth into deep space. At night I would stare in wonderment at the moon and imagined what it would be like to be looking up from earth and see that terrible event occur. One night I dreamt that this actually happened. I remember looking up and hearing someone yell “BOOOOOOM!”. There was no sound effect, just someone yelling “BOOOOOOM!”. At the time it frightened me because in my mind that was what it would have sounded like. I had no idea what that sound would be like, no concept that in actuality there would be no sound. I was young and that was that. Funniest thing I remember from my childhood.
As I sat Wednesday night in our session in EC&I 831 that focused on the order of closure on an educational blog by Al Upton in Australia, and my previous post on the recent events that surrounded the near expulsion of a student at Ryerson for his use of Facebook I recalled that dream.
I remembered the dream because in a very real sense it parallels the lack of understanding that these administrations of their respective institutions have in relation to these technologies. So instead of investigation and consultation to develop an understanding of these social networking tools and their applications, they come to their own rash and uninformed conclusions and act accordingly. They yell “BOOOOM!”.
It was very soon after (maybe a couple of weeks) I had that dream I recalled how silly it was to hear that yell. I wonder if these institutions are still yelling the same sound and how long it will take them to come to that same realization that I did those many years ago.
Space 1999 … oh the humanity. I watched the series later in life, and wow, was it fake. Seemed so real when you were a kid.
Great analogy Shaun! The best ones are personalized as you have done here.
We all seem to have strange ideas when we are kids, that don’t seem so real when we get older. Yet we still act on strange ideas sometimes. Good call in linking it with the Ryerson Facebook scare.
Shaun,
I agree that the Upton story seems a little strange. I keep thinking about my Law 30 blog and how it must operate, but I guess this is how we learn from others.
I think the idea of admin. understanding these ideas relates to change theory and the difficulty implementing initiatives. Only two months ago, I was pretty clueless on the educational app’s of many tools we currently are learning about. I am trying to get my Law 30 site to be more “global”, but seem to run into snags.
Any ideas? here’s the link to my project.
http://law30mont.edublogs.org
Any ideas