Monday, August 4th, 2008
The Economist Debates are here again. The latest is: Is there an upside to the present increase in world food prices? The initial vote is quite close but the ‘ayes’ have it. It made me look again at past debates and I found my little comment on the technology in education one. I reproduce it here as it struck me as worth saving. Particularly as I sat through a fatuous debate on whether technologoy was the silver bullet as far as Knowledge Management was concerned. One more comment on ‘it is all about people’ and I will throw up. One more debate about whether Powerpoint is a delivery system or enabler and I will scream! Anyway to all of those detabates here are my short, sharp and pretty obvious points!
It is funny how most of the comments are anti technology but the vote is pro. The vast majority of learners get on with it using the tools to hand. To be anti-technology is to fly in the face of reality. Education uses what is available from books to text messages and the richer the technology the richer the opportunities to learn in different ways. Powerpoint is not learning: Powerpoint is a delivery platform for information, and it can be good and bad. But give me a powerpoint presentation any day to an illegible blackboard that is erased before I can write it down; give me a word processor rather than read and organise my handwriting: give me google than a futile search in a library for an article that can be at my fingertips in two seconds.Technology enhances my life AND my learning why try to separate the two processes??