Keynote Address 2005: From Plato to Pentium Plus – The SOUL within Technology
The focus of this paper is a challenging analysis of how many educators perceive technology today and how children learn. Technology changes people. A person, whose words can span continents or reach around the world in a fraction of a micro-second, is considered different from a person who can only speak across a room. Given such changes, our spirituality naturally alters and evolves (just as it transforms as we grow older and wiser or older and more foolish). “Such change is a part of life and while that change is generally recognized as good, not all change is good. Technology and spirituality are yoked together and they will change together”, (Dr.theol. Anne Forest 2004). Too often, isolated ethical questions which have attempted to evaluate technology in education in the past have lead us away from the real question, which is one about ourselves and our students as unique and creative individuals. Human beings are fantastic and incredibly interesting but also intensely flawed with a tendency towards prejudice and hate, a tendency which influences many aspects of life including the way many of them view and use technology. This paper proposes that we view technology, humanity and the soul within as ‘Mathethical Processes’ (Ó Murchú, 2004), which lead to meaningful, authentic and encultured change and learning at the beginning of a new Century.
Daithí Ó Murchú is a primary school, principal teacher in Gaelscoil Ó Doghair, Newcastle West, Ireland since its foundation in 1985. In 1993 he founded the first co-educational Gaelcholáiste in the Mid-West and in 1996, was awarded his Masters in Management and Curriculum studies in Trinity College. Following on from his first PhD in Technology and linguistics in the United States he was elected executive vice-president of human language and technology with SITE ( USA) and co-opted to the American Teacher Council. As a cultural expert with MyEurope schools, Daithí collaborated with Waikito University, New Zealand on their distance-education, teacher training programme and began collaborating with Trinity College, Carmarthen, Wales and the University of San Diego in their technology and Multiple Intelligences Department. Having been seconded to Mary Immaculate College of Education as a lecturer in Methodology of teaching Gaeilge, Daithí continued to work with the Master programmes in MSc, MEd and MA in Education programmes in the various universities. As a research fellow in ICT and Education at Trinity College, Dublin, he lectured and designed the first MSc programme modules in Irish in Knowledge management and ICT. Daithí is presently assisting Aalborg University, Denmark in their VirtDan project which designs innovative, e-Learning, blended environments for linguistics, and is contracted to the position on National co-director of Gaeilge with Hibernia College, Ireland. He continues to teach in Gaelscoil Ó Doghair, which is his first ‘mathethical’ love.