Chris O'Hagan (C.M.Ohagan@derby.ac.uk)
Tue, 24 Nov 1998 10:51:19 +0000
From: "Chris O'Hagan" <C.M.Ohagan@derby.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 10:51:19 +0000 Subject: [ifets] Conference thread: technology inspiring studetns
Hi
There have been a few problems with servers, but hopefully we are all
getting ifets mail again.
Bob Leamson asks if 'any technology lives up to its promises' and to
some extent that is the same as saying 'tomorrow never comes'. But
is some of this failure in education due to our inability even to
'mine' it as deeply as we might?
I think Bob maybe misses the essence of my questions which were about
teachers rather than learners. I am sure technology, as Bob
suggests, can 'inspire students to learn' just as books (an old
technology) can, but my point was rather whether teachers have the
skills to facilitate this and the ability to use technologies like
video, photography, graphics, or the ability to create new forms of
assessment around the new media, or the ability to develop
pedagogically effective resource-based learning. Without these
skills the new technologies like the WWW (which uses all of the
above media and methods) may be doomed to the margins, apart from
unstructured, serendipitous use (as students might explore a library
for material not on the 'Recommended' list) but without the skills to
separate the wheat from the chaff (which teachers and librarians
explicitly or implicitly supply for print media).
Perhaps I am being hard on teachers - or rather teachers' *managers*
effectiveness in providing appropriate cpd opportunities. I agree
that some teachers, the enthusiasts who give up so much of their own
time, are getting there. That has always been the case, and I do not
dispute it, and great examples can be found, and every institution
can pull out its pocket(s) of expertise to show it is not 'living in
the past'. But how deep does it go, how ubiquitous is it? Is
George Free right that the 'traditional instructionalist models' and
the social organisation of schools (and maybe Colleges and
Universities as well) are inhibiting factors for the majority? Can
we unpack this a bit more?
How far can students be inspired if their teachers are not?
Chris O'Hagan
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