Hawisher and Selfe state that computers are “increasingly important in educational settings – not simply because they are tools for writing (they are not simply tools’ they are, indeed, complex technological artifacts that embody and shape – and are shaped by – the ideological assumptions of an entire culture), but rather because these machines serve as powerful cultural and catalytic forces in the lives of teachers and students” (2). Additionally, they argue that we are in a prefigurative society (a concept Margaret Mead). The prefigurative learning curve occurs in a society where changes so rapid that adults are trying to prepare children for experiences the adults themselves have never had" (4). Thus, "the immediate and dramatic needs our pre-figurative culture faces...demand a new kind of social and educational response the privileges participatory input, ecological sensitivity, and appreciation for cultural diversity, and the intellectual use technology, among other approaches. In the prefigurative society, Mead notes, students must – at least to some extent – learn important lessons from each other, helping each other find their way through an unfamiliar thicket of issues and situations about which the older members of the society are uncertain"(4). The essays in this collection, then, "demonstrate the value of seeking understanding in unfamiliar and familiar places and of learning in new and old ways – of continuing to take risks in connection with the new technologies even when those risks produce results that are unsatisfactory in someway" (4).
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