An Expat Educator in Asia

Whilst authentic learning should mean that the tools that students learn with are transparent, the reality is that we are in a time where children in schools do not have access to the tools that are most appropriate for learning all of the time and it is unlikely that anytime soon there will be a decision that allows for every school on the planet to have access to all of the resources that they need, regardless of cost. For this reason, it is important to discuss the efficacy of tools for classroom learning and what represents value for money.

Recently Australia via the IWB.NET people had the 4th National IWB conference on the Gold Cost. Chris Betcher did an excellent podcast review of the conference. He also made some great postings on his blog about the conference which has in excess of 400 delegates and around 120 presenters.

Another great but slightly controversial post was made by Brett Moller who questioned the whole concept of IWB use.

Even though I try to earn a meager living selling and supporting this technology, I applaud this discussion as it encourages debate on what should be happening in our classrooms. Educators need to have a say in the technology that is all too often forced onto them with little if any persuasion by educational leadership as to why it suits what they are trying to achieve with children.

I was in the appalling situation recently of presenting my clever classroom solution to a school who were all told to be in the room by the admin. You could just tell from the tension in the air when the management team were there and the number of people who did not want to engage in discussion during the presentation but came up to me and gave very intelligent feedback afterward that they were not to question the leadership.

I could tell that my comments on the need for good PD and a common vision of what the school wanted from the technology investment were being seen as “all good in theory but we are far too busy for that”. I returned to the school later to see that they had invested in an expensive name-brand IWB of a small size stuck on the wall in the front right-hand corner of every classroom at a height that was unreachable by any student in the classroom and well out of the way of the dominant standard whiteboard in the room. Clearly they did not take onboard a word of what I said.

I happen to believe that the IWB is great technology for where the majority of schools are at today. Yes, it can be used in a very teacher-centered way if control of the board is seldom passed to the students. The thing I love about it is that it can take the apprehensive teacher from no ICT use to daily creation of digital content without any effort on their part.

The thing about any technology intervention is that it must be accompanied by a vision for how is going be used to achieve the goals. If those goals are not out in the open, discussed by the community and shared by a majority of the teaching staff, no amount of investment in technology will make for an effective intervention.

How are the goals communicated to the members of your learning community?

Filed under: Appropriate Hardware for Education, Learning for a Flat World