My Brain Hurts

Following on from my last post, this was the title of an article in today’s Australian newspaper on film producer turned British politician David Puttnam’s comments regarding digital natives and the chasm opening up between students and teachers over ICT usage. As he has a number of educational credentials and was addressing the Curriculum Corporation conference in Sydney I will assume that he knows the correct meaning of digital native and digital immigrant, I’m therefore assuming that the reporter messed up the quotes on that matter.

There is nothing wrong with being a digital immigrant, indeed it is what we who are not digital natives should aspire to be.

I was impressed that he made the exact point that is a catchcry of mine, namely: teachers (and schools) that fail to embrace digital technologies will be viewed by students as irrelevant.

He made an interesting point by comparing “the standoff between education and technology to the plight of the British clergy in the 17th century, who greeted with furore the first publication of the bible. It meant they were no longer the old fount of knowledge because people started to read the Bible for themselves and challenged the orthodoxies.”

He may be branding teacher too widely here for most teachers at least recognise the value of technology as a teaching and learning tool, they are just not sure how to best utilise it. The main problem is that there has never been enough funding for PD. There is a strange assumption that teachers will know or find out what to do – not so.

What really irks me is teachers (and schools) who think that browsing the web and typing in Word (with the odd Powerpoint thrown in for creativity) is utilising ICT. Rather, this is merely utilising technology at a very low level and something I’ll address in greater detail later.

The article ended with another interesting Lord Putnam quote “Steal the technology, steal the ideas, use the energy and inventiveness but protect the values you are teaching.”

Food for thought . . . . . . . . .

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Education, ICTPD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.