Getting Ready for Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan is arguably the most important University of Manitoba alumnus. He spent his formative years in Winnipeg, attending elementary, secondary and post-secondary schools. He received both his Master's and his PhD here at the U of M.

And yet, we seem to ignore him. Or, at the very least he has been forgotten. Too bad.

McLuhan's contribution to educational theory and practice may seem is tenuous at best. Or is it? If technology is a major driving force of today's society, we as teachers, need to be very aware of what is happening. Mcluhan mahy provide us with the tools for such an examination.

What McLuhan said was that there are four laws the govern how media/technology influence us. They happen all at once in a kind of a tetrad. In order to understand our global world, we need to ask these four questions simultaneously. They are:

• What does the technology enhance?
• What does the technology obsolesce?
• What does the technology retrieve (that we have lost)?
• When pushed to the extreme, what does the technology reverse into?

We are going to explore McLuhan's contribution to understanding technology in education.

Our explorations will begin with an old program (produced for schools) called Media and Meaning. This 20 minute program will set the stage for a 90 minute DVD called McLuhan's Wake.