At a recent conference for college staff, Anthony Pitucco, chair of physics at Pima Community College in Arizona, and his colleague Stewart Barr, chair of philosophy, made a point about the academic reliance on technological tools.  Namely, they hinder learning and “diminish the role of teaching and education”, they said.

Too many PowerPoint presentations lead to less thinking and less learning. And too many teachers are relying on them instead of their own communication skills, they said.

Though there are specific software and other tools that can help make the lives of faculty easier and create other benefits — such as a decline in plagiarism –  Pitucco and Barr are concerned about the emphasis placed by many colleges on technology over the human element. They pointed to data that suggested students were not learning at the level they should be, despite their easy access to technology.

It is not the technology itself that is the problem, they said, but how it is used.

Meanwhile, for a look at the benefits of technology in teaching, go to  Stanford University’s new Literature Lab, where English professor Matthew L. Jockers is using technology with a team of graduate students from a variety of disciplines to analyze more literature than they ever could have before.

The students are using Stanford’s new Literature Lab to “explore the frontiers of literary scholarship”, with the help of access to Google’s digital library. In his blog, Prof. Jockers describes the work being done by students as the “lifeblood of the lab”. The approach could fundamentally alter how humanities research is done.

Read more about the Pittuco and Barr seminar and Stanford’s Literature Lab.