I agree! That is why I encourage the teachers I work with to refer to the ISTE NETS Standards http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx

Topical Teaching

The problem with the wonderfully diverse technologies available to teachers is that it can sometimes breed lazy teaching. A SmartBoard doesn’t make a teacher. The challenge for teachers is not to rely on the technologies at hand, but to simply use them in conjunction with a well-developed lesson.

When reports show that computers don’t make a difference to learning, I wonder if they are really saying that teachers haven’t learned to capitalise from them yet:

Kids love using computers and gadgets in the classroom but the technology has not made them better learners, suggests a new report.

The non-profit Media Awareness Network interviewed a small sample of plugged-in elementary and high school teachers from across Canada and found there’s work to be done to better incorporate technology into schools.

The report suggests many students aren’t really as good at using the Internet as it may seem. While it’s assumed…

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3 thoughts on “The Problem With I.T. in the Classroom

  1. I remember listening some years ago to a wonderful talk by Dale Spender, an American Professor at the time of the talk, in Washington I think it was. She had done some research about what people were saying about the negatives about new technology and compared it with what people said about, ‘Printed Books’. The quotes were almost identical! So, teachers who teach using printed books are probably prone to being lazy too. Some of mine were certainly.
    But what kind of lazy? I think teachers have to stop teaching, or at least cut it down to 10% of the day, max. Good teaching is about opening minds for good learning. The medium is not, in that situation, the message, the opposite is true. Most of the books I had at school, some years ago I must note, were rubbish, truly rubbish. Poorly written, inaccurate, biased, basically designed to ‘occupy children’, that is to imprison them in things which are so confusing you thought you were the dumb ones. Most of the teachers were pretty poor too, and I went to a Grammar School, and I can think of maybe 5 teachers who were really good, maybe 5 more who were OK, the rest, not good at all.
    So, what is a well developed lesson? I would start with this lesson plan:
    Teacher: So what do you want to learn today?
    Class response: ……
    Teacher: OK, so how are we going to do that?
    And, the lesson has begun.

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