My 1st year Educational Studies group have been looking at education and technology, past present and future. When I say past , it is a fairly resent past in terms of education, 10 years, but the shift in technology has been quite an eye opener for us. Their research has just demonstrated, yet again, the vast range of provision across the nation. In fact some groups took a boarder view, looking at the spread of technology across the globe. This is a link from one of the wikis.http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7110000/newsid_7117000/7117011.stm
Kids in the African country of Nigeria are testing cheap laptops, specially designed so they can be used in poor nations. They cost less than £100.
Each group have created a wiki where they have highlighted the key points from a given perspective. There are some really thought provoking issues on their wikis. Take a look and leave your comments, I’m sure they would be glad to see their wikis are being read.
edstudies.wetpaint.com
slateandchalk.wetpaint.com
wikigeeks5.wetpaint.com
wenglish-ed.wetpaint.com
futurama-education.wetpaint.com
On a similar thread this weeks chat from ITTE is the history of educational ICT and how there is a need to preserve some of our good practices and valuable literature; a job that Becta once did so well. I enjoyed this email below the most;
“Isn’t anyone looking at the history of educational ICT as an area for academic study? We all tend to be so future-oriented that we sit far too light to some of this stuff. There is more to it than a bunch of boring old farts sitting around saying “I remember when we used to write programs on punched cards...” As Larry Cuban so dramatically illustrated, perhaps there are some lessons to be learned. I have a hard time trying to persuade undergraduates (who did KS1 SATs) that education existed before the National Curriculum, and some of it at least was pretty good.
