Are We Really Connected?
Noami Story, MCLI

Many people from other colleges talk about how we, as ten Maricopa Community Colleges, are very fortunate to have access to technology, especially as the District sets out to insure we all have high-level workstations. It is wonderful to be able to create applications of teaching and learning. It is exciting to be able to deliver learning experiences fairly readily and in flexible formats. And, it is convenient to communicate via our electronic mail and data networks.

Yet, often we have clusters of people who are "out of the loop!" Some may not have time to read or to apply everything we have access to or others may choose not to access information. Paradoxically, we can access more -- as well as the most current -- information via technology and networks, but some of us are uninformed or have disengaged from discourse. This mirrors our society in which illiteracy is still high and disenfranchisement of various groups of people still occurs.

Has technology at Maricopa really served to connect us to each other or to our students? As we improve our electronic connections do our personal ones deteriorate? Has technology supported us in building learning communities?

This past summer several faculty and staff from the Maricopa Community Colleges attended the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) Teaching, Learning, & Technology Roundtable Summer Institute, Strategies for Change. Throughout the Institute, presentations and forums addressed the issues and challenges related to teaching, learning, and technology, much like our Ocotillo Initiative at Maricopa.

One of the most compelling presentations was done not by an educator or technologist, but by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., a child psychiatrist. He talked about connectedness, and to some extent, the dangers of becoming disconnected. Hallowell said that we as educators have many challenges to create opportunities for our students to feel "comfortably connected to ideas and information." Just because we have access to information and ideas, it does not mean we know how to use them or that we are comfortable with the knowledge we gain.

One of Hallowell's most insightful comments was that the institutions and organizations "that do best are the ones that pay attention to the connectedness within them." He talked about the nurturing and valuing of its people for "they are their people." It made no sense to have "the people of the organization feeling cut off or left out."

Hallowell further states, that "if we are to be increasingly "cocooned" (when everything can be done at a keyboard), then, more than ever, schools...will have to respond to the tremendously increasing need for the sort of human connectedness that the "cocooned"... will inevitably -- and already does -- lack." We as educators and community colleges have, as Hallowell said, "a unique opportunity to lead the way in recreating the social interconnectedness we so disjointedly seek" in society today.

As we create technology infrastructures to form "learning communities" within and outside our colleges, we should ask if we have spent enough time on the requirements of connectedness that people need? If, as Hallowell posits, people need to be, see, and feel connected with ideas and information and with each other, then how can we make sure that technology can or will sustain or promote the connections that makes life meaningful for them?

As we continue to ride the many waves of change and innovation, especially with technology, we may wish to engage in thinking about the glue of humanity that holds us together as the Maricopa Community Colleges and as communities of learners. Hallowell encouraged us as innovators and leaders in teaching, learning, and technology to continue our important work, but he also challenged us to remember the connectedness that is important to people, places, and ideas to flourish.

Hallowell further expands the notion of connectedness and disconnectedness in a chapter in his book, Finding the Heart of the Child: Essays on Children, Families, and Schools. If you are interested in reading this chapter, MCLI can send you a copy. Or you can find it by searching the archives of the AAHE listserv at:
http://www.aahe.org/aahesgit.htm

-t h e   l a b y r i n t h-

URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/
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