PGCE Diary 2 – Digital Debate
27 09 2008This week I’ve been to a number of lectures, including e-safety, behaviour management, ECM (every child matters) and the new national curriculum.
During a ‘Where have we been with the National Curriculum and where are we going’? lecture, in reply to the question ‘Skills and processes for what?’ we watched the following show:
During an afternoon discussion, I bought up with my table the fact that this showed just how important ICT was in schools today. I was met with, I think, a reluctant acceptance. One voiced an opinion that students would always need the ability to research from books and physical sources. The justification was, for example, a History trainee who would glean most of their ‘data’ from books. Me? I remained steadfast, the future is digital. All books will be available (or released in some form) online. Is (or will) the skill of researching physical sources (still be) essential?
I’d hate to teach someone how to find something in a book using the index just to look in the index of a book and find something. Especially considering that forward thinking world institutions are already digitising their paper collections. The Library of Congress is just one example. Meaning that rare sources contained soley within their building in a physical presence can be accessed and searched by anyone with a connection.
Teaching kids to connect, how to access online tools, how to search and evaluate information, and how to share and collaborate is the key to unlocking their future success in a digital world.
Brilliant video.
Er… nice one! Now I want to kill myself after watching that video. Mate, I really hope I’m not around the day that more-intelligent-than-the-whole-human-race-put-together computer comes out. Maybe I’ve watched too many films, but I have this unshakeable feeling it’s gonna be pissed off. And if it’s only a thousand bucks a pop, they’ll be millions of ‘em sold! Aaarrrggghhh! Why not teach kids to boycot technology, or at least be cautious about it, rather than embrace it? It’s evolving too fast for us clunky apes to keep up with and it’s gonna give us unimaginable headaches before it enslaves us completely.
The video, it was generally agreed, is over the top. Melodramatic. People are definitely fearful of ‘technology’ and its exponential nature. It is how you define technology, however, that sets the tone for any debate. The cleverer-than-the-entire-human-race-laptop….not sure how they would work really. Would you still be word processing on a Microsoft run platform…? Or would the laptop just nuke you with a satallite-guided laser if it was having a bad day?
What? Who said anything about a laser? Oh now I’m even more scared.