Visual Literacy, Media Literacy, & New Media Literacies

I have four questions for this week reflection:

1. How does efficiency influence your values of what is good, effective, and worthwhile?

Today’s day most people try to be efficient and it affects the way people think and act.  I believe that everyone is influence by efficiency in some degree or another.  It also affects the background or cultural education.  For me, efficiency goes hand to hand with time; if we use a lot of time and produce little, it is not efficient, but if we produce a lot or good quality in a short time, it is efficient.

    

2. What does Scientific Management tell us about how we should use technology in the teaching and when and how we know if it is good?

This question is related to the first one, technology in teaching is good if we are efficient in the using of it. If when we use technology in school, we make the learning easier and useful, then technology is good. 

3. Comment on the three things wrong with Laggards in Our Schools by Leonard Ayres 1909

There many things that are wrong with Laggards in Our Schools, but I find that the main wrong thing is that children, who are behind regarding their age and grade, are considered as “retards.”   He explains that if a kid misses a year of school without thinking of the cause then automatically the kid is a retard kid, and it is not worth to use the money of the taxpayers to educate this kind of children.  I also have to disagree with him in the subject of people with a second language.  Another thing wrong is that he put the school system at the same level of factories, he compares the school to a factory and he forces the schools to follow a factory model.  The third thing I could think as wrong is applying an efficiency index into the school system. 

4. Why is it called the Cult of Efficient? 

The cult of efficiency goes from democratic societies to post-industrialization.  Efficiency dominates our lives; it is a way to achieve values and productivity.  To me it is a devotion to achieve the maximum productivity with the minimum efforts.