Given the view of schooling in the readings for this week ("Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology" by Collins & Halverson, ch 2 & 3; "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" by Gee, ch 2; "From Content to Contect: Videogames as Designed Experience" by Squire, from Educational Researcher 35(8)), which technologies do you think are most likely to be taken up in schools? Why? Which technologies push your thinking about teaching and learning? Why? Do these two lists necessarily line up?
The articles we read this week were by technology enthusiasts, I would even say apologists, who seem to be incapable of heaping any sort of criticism on technology in the classroom. I'm in favor of computers and new ways of learning, but just tossing a bunch of computers in a classroom does nothing to educate students.
The biggest hurdle, which the authors just gloss over, is money. Thee cost of all of what they're proposing is very prohibitive. I think laptops are probably the most likely technology to be adopted. Uruguay is giving the $100 laptops to every student in the country. Costs could come down for most places by going with open source materials instead of paying licensing fees.
There are several sites that could make classroom learning more interesting for the student (e.g. voicethread.com, zamzar.com). There are great sites to do research that are more interesting than looking through a library (e.g. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)
If students have their own laptops, and have access to interesting sites to do research and to learn, then with the proper guidance they may find reasons to want to learn.
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