The phrase “a computer is just a tool” is often used to suggest that they are neutral, that the choices we make about the technologies we use have no impact on scholarship or teaching. Disagreeing completely with that idea, I love when such assumptions are challenged as in this thought from Luke at http://lukewaltzer.com/on-edtech-and-the-digital-humanities/:
“Our original focus was on nurturing student-centered learning by merging WAC and WID principles with the possibilities opened up by online publishing, in making more visible the pedagogy (both successful and not) at work in our classrooms, and at supporting an alternative to the proprietary course management system that still predominates across CUNY. Blackboard is itself an embodiment of the university culture that Neary and Winn rightly find so troubling: students cycle through a system that structurally, aesthetically and rhetorically reinforces the notions that education is consumption, the faculty member is a content provider, the classroom is hierarchical, and learning is closed. Less and less though do we have to convince listeners that open source publishing platforms and the many flowers they’ve allowed to bloom can create exciting possibilities in and beyond the classroom; we can show them link after model after link after model after link.”