Okay, it’s been a while since made a posting to iTeacher.  A long while.  I’ve spent the last year going through some major transitions.  I moved from Australia to the United States.  I also accepted a new job teaching instructional technology to 7th graders at Jackson Memorial Middle School in Massillon, Ohio.  I also enrolled in the School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University where I am studying to become a K-12 media specialist.  I hope to revitalize my blog again and re-join the conversation on e-learning and technology integration in schools.

I just read an article Technology: The Wrong Questions and the Right Answers by Ira David Socol.  I wanted to pass it onto you because it raised some excellent points about how we approach technology integration.  The article offers a historical perspective on the controversy of new technologies as they threaten the status quo in schools.  For example, the introduction of the student slates in classrooms in the 1840s was hugely controversial.  Imagine that!

Socol goes on to explain that education’s aversion to new technology has always been around.  Today many educators are asking whether or not we should use the latest digital communication technologies in the classroom.  Socol says this is the wrong question.  Instead, we should ask how we should use these communication technologies in schools.  These technologies are the means in which we communicate in our modern world and a necessary tool for business.

Says Socol: “Yes, we still have stone carvers. Yes, we still have calligraphers. But we no longer teach students to chase the duck, pluck the feather, and cut the quill.  We no longer teach Morse code … Now we must give up teaching that ink-on-paper is the primary information source. It is not. We must give up insisting that students learn ‘cursive’ writing. Instead, they must learn to text on a Blackberry and dictate intelligibly to their computer.”

The article ends with a bang.  Follow its link in this posting to read the entire article.