Marc Prensky’s talk caused equal parts of adoration and despair at the IATEFL Annual Conference this year (mostly dependent on age, attitude and agenda) and, for those of us who knew what to expect, a certain admiration for some of his ideas, and all of his energy. Inevitably his words in that hour are picked over like flesh on the highway for those looking for supporting statements for their arguments, and I intend to be no different here.
Prensky said that those who are not particularly au fait with technology tend to talk about it using nouns - they talk of printers and cables, of documents and internet connections, of IWBs and data projectors. But these are, of course, mere objects and not at all interesting in the grand scheme of things, and certainly not intrinsically interesting in a discussion of technologies in the classroom.
This, inevitably, is where the ‘IWBs don’t promote learning or increase motivation’ argument bases itself, firmly in reasearch reports that conclude these two ‘facts’ and fail to examine why IWBS should do either of these things (do textbooks? do chairs?). It looks at the purported failings of IWBs in terms of nouns, not verbs. It’s all about the product (the noun) and not the process (the verbs).
Those teachers who use ICT regularly in their classroom tend - along with their learners - to consider technologies in their classrooms as verbs. It’s all about creating, mixing, downloading, blogging, podcasting, sharing, writing, talking… you name it!
And that’s probably why the two groups are not good at talking to each other. Until the ‘XXX technology produces no significant YYY’ brigade recognise that a tool is only as good, creative and educational as the person wielding it, and that the tool itself can not teach, then communication is going to be limited.
So, let’s cut the nouns and move to the verbs. And the first verbs for those not currently using technologies in their teaching and training will be ‘try’, ‘implement’, ‘experience’, ‘reflect’. When that’s done you’ll be in a better position to argue your case, I think.
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