This week we immersed ourselves in two sets of readings: one set was devoted to eLearning "theory" and what makes eLearning effective or ineffective, and the other was dedicated to critiques of eLearning in general (including a podcast interview with Mark Buaerlein, author of "The Dumbest Generation", which I found particularly engaging).

The thesis of Bauerlein's book is that "teenagers and young adults... are drowning in a tidal wave of teen/youth stuff delivered through digital tools, and the adult realities of history and civics and politics and foreign affairs and fine arts can't break through."

I couldn't help but be reminded of Andrew Keen's book "The Cult of the Amateur", a similar rant about the evils of cheap, ubiquitous technology. The idea is that since anybody can now make a movie and post it on YouTube, for example, people spend more time watching amateurish crud than other content of more "substance", and this is causing a collective "dumbing down" which is having disastrous effects on our culture.

Well, look. I don't have a PhD in Education or English Lit, so I'm not about to go up against these guys in terms of theory. But find me a young person that is NOT more interested in entertainment than in schooling. I'm an uncle, and my girlfriend is a foster mom. I can tell you that these kids spend every minute of their free time on MySpace , etc., and the mindlessness of the content in which they immerse themselves is rather alarming.

But what was I doing at their age? Watching Saturday morning cartoons - a far less active endeavor. To hear Bauerlein talk, you'd think that if someone suddenly pulled the plug on Facebook, young people would flock to art museums just to have something to do. What nonsense. I don't think it makes a lot sense to freak out over my niece's fascination with Club Penguin.

Isn't it a GOOD thing for young people to have these tools? If you had to choose between having your child engaged in some sort of interactive activity, however vapid, and having them plopped in front of the TV, for hours a day, which would you choose?

And yet, I think Bauerlein's concerns are absolutely valid - there is a general lack of motivation evidenced by young people whose minds are awash in a sea of digital goo. Just because young people have access to better tools than we had does not mean they are learning to use them in ways that we, their parents and teachers, would appreciate. And isn't that a function of how their lives and curricula are structured? And isn't that, in turn, a function of our own understanding of the possibilities of technology? Who can deny that you can have too much of a good thing?

Dreyfus makes a similar case against technology-enhanced learning, but seems to be operating from the same fallacy - that all learning that takes place through a technological context will suffer from the same design flaws, inherent limitations, and moral bankruptcy that our parents said would curve our spines and lose the war.

Yes. There's a difference between data and information, and the availability of data in vast amounts is not necessarily a positive thing. But the bottom line is, the cat is out of the bag and it's not going back in. The answer is not to bemoan the evils of technology, or of the people who have vaunted it into the role it plays today. Rather, let's try to understand what, *specifically*, technology can add to the learning process, and build technological contexts that can direct minds in more effective ways - and when we cannot, we should simply remember that Instructional Design does not equal eLearning and try a different approach.

We get the technology we deserve.