Bill MacKenty posted a couple of times a few weeks ago taking a look at what the cost/value relationship of technology in education might be. It’s always comforting to know that you are not alone in your thoughts as this was almost exactly what I was telling people yesterday at the inaugural Festival of Teaching and Learning. The technology is not something that will solve the problems, look at it as a way to bring new focus or fuel to a conversation, because the conversation is, after all, what (I hope) an instructor would want to start with or in their students. A conversation between the student and the content, their peers and others who are in the field.
Granted, not every student is going to care enough to take part in the conversation, but technology offer more than one way to get involved. If this still fails at the end of the day, at least it’s not for lack of trying on the part of the instructor.
So rather than trying to pump more toys into classrooms, we should really be looking at what the tools in the class are allowing students and teachers to access as they sit and then as needed (or predicted) increase in a more customized manner the technology that gets sunk into a space. Of course, this is the ideal and as often as not, a general tool is what is going to be used – fixed vs mobile labs and the like – but in the end, it’s still going to all come back to how that conversation is started, not how many computers can be made to fit into a room.
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