Discussion 3

I agree that Clark's article was a bit overwhelming. I did not find myself truly understanding his argument until several pages into the article. However, once I finally figured it out, I did agree that it is not the use of media that promotes learning but the method in which the media is used. I felt that this was an outdated article because of the term media, whereas now I believe we are more focused on technology and the specific type of technology. It seemed that he focused a lot on cost effectiveness in saying that different types of media deliver the same thing. However, a teacher must decide the media best suited for the method of teaching. Also involved in this is simply what the school's budget will allow for. More attention should again be paid to the method in which the instruction is taught because teachers have to make do with what they have.

I believe Lowther's article, to an extent, addresses these same issues. I believe the question of learning from media is discussed, but the results are skewed. I found problems with the study conducted in that some of the question areas could be answered simply because one set of students had computers and one did not. The results, therefore, were common sense. They did show that the students with laptops performed better on the writing and skills test. This is predictable because they are using laptops to help them with spelling, grammatical structure, etc. everyday so their errors are automatically pointed out to them. This attention is not given individually in the other class. Also the results of the skills test is assured because students with laptops have more access to searching out answers to problems, organizing, etc.

Overall, I found Lowther's article to be very predictable. However, the main issue to remember is that it is not feasible for all classrooms to be laptop classrooms. Yes, they provide many positive aspects to learning. However, there are drawbacks as Catherine has mentioned. It is important then for teachers to provide this active learning environment for students through the resources they have been given.