#Edchat on Continue

On discomfort

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 21:33:25 +0000

This article - Dev Discomfort - is written to reflect the pressures and stresses on being a developer - but it reflects very well what it means to be a teacher in an education system increasingly being flooded with technology and tools.

“I feel like my relationship with my tools has gotten flipped—instead of them existing to serve my needs, I feel like I have to improve myself to be able to use them. … The prerequisites have gotten so large that it feels like I can’t even get good at something before the whole rickety system has been replaced by something new. Not necessarily better in ways that matter to me, mind you. Just new.”

Pimpin' ain't easy

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 02:27:07 +0000

In my role as IT/e-learning lead teacher I get lots of queries and requests for help. But two questions put to me this week got me thinking.

Q1: “I am getting a lot of can’t send undeliverable messages-have been for over a week. On my class computer under outlook I have a whole lot of unsent because they won’t go. Could you have a look at some stage as my parent emails are not making it at times-even when reply to sender.”

"Technology at the core"

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:23:37 +0000

Technology drives South Korean ‘smart’ schools.

Not much mention of learning in this video. Instead it’s all about the technology. Because that’s what makes a school “smart”. Apparently. I know it’s the job of the media to focus on the shiny. I’m not even that bothered about the hints of ‘Big Brother", or the counting of calories in school lunches.

But I was a little worried.

Because if you look closely and pay attention to the model of learning, and imagine that the shiny tablets are just a normal tablet made out of paper, and that the large MS Windows powered touchscreen is just a black board, it demonstrates the model of learning that exists in behind all of the hi-tech, ‘smart’ shiny on display. A model that’s largely untouched over the last 100 years. In which a person stands up the front and tells a bunch of other folk what’s important.