I got an amazing number of retweets to “Every Teacher that can be replaced by an iPad, should be”. And the title of todays post is a great accompaniment to the meme.
I am extremely pro-education. Considering I’m touring schools for my kids post-primary education, I take note of little things – such as the prevalence of ICT resource, the layout of desks and presence of student work. I’ve seen some amazing examples of all of this over the last couple of weeks but what’s most encouraging for me is the number of schools in Northern Ireland which have started their 1:1 programmes for technology in education.
I’ve been introduced to iPad deployments in Wallace High School, Wellington College, Oliver Plunkett Primary, Banbridge Academy and Bangor Academy. I’d love to know about more in a our little province.
With respect to my day job, I’m interested in increasing the amount of curriculum-supporting content that is produced, understanding that the content presented to Northern Irish schools (for example, in History it is The Famine, The United Irishmen) may be different to the content presented to North American schools. There’s a question around whether the ability to create standardised and reasonably priced textbooks (a la iBooks) has gone far enough.
At the LwF conference earlier this week (which I didn’t get to attend), there was a refrain of “Bring a Browser” rather than “Bring Your Own Device” being a solution for education. I would have to echo Fraser Speirs in that this presents a “non-selection” of technology. It represents an unwillingness to make a decision either way. While I think everyone would like to see content presented in a cross-platform and universally accessible way at some point, the reality is that most platforms are not ready for this. If you build for this now, you will end up with a compromised solution, a fits-no-one delivery of lacklustre content where you might as well have delivered it using text, images and radio buttons. It would become a fundamental waste of resources.
I’m as keen on Teacher Engagement as much as I am on Student Engagement. In The Tech Show podcast, we spend a little time talking about student engagement and attainment and attempting to relate that it’s not about getting the answers to questions (and relate this via the repulsive idea that a teacher might give the answers to students being the worst outcome of modern education).
How might technology engage a Teacher more in delivery?