The first story is wonderful. Zuckerberg joining a long line of people who don't understand that education is as much about developing the generic skills of collaboration and productive teamwork than it is about learning to "do stuff" that computers can do better. There are some parallels with the second story though. Educators have different attitudes to tech, for sure. Partly due to their own attitudes, expertise, teaching style, partly the psychographics of the people they teach. As an educator I think it's right that edtechs can't force educators to use tools they invent, they should sell the advantages of the tool to their educator clients, which includes researching their needs in a non-trivial way. Thanks for this particularly interesting edition!
Thanks other Colin. Ed/Learning technologists absolutely have a responsibility to ensure that educators have what they need to enable good teaching practice. Which absolutely involves working with the educator to understand their context wherever possible. And for the vast majority of them/us, this is a personal principle.
Now this will, at times, conflict with directives from the academics in institutional leadership that certain tools must be used which Ed Techs are expected to enforce. (But with no power). This is where things can get messy.
The first story is wonderful. Zuckerberg joining a long line of people who don't understand that education is as much about developing the generic skills of collaboration and productive teamwork than it is about learning to "do stuff" that computers can do better. There are some parallels with the second story though. Educators have different attitudes to tech, for sure. Partly due to their own attitudes, expertise, teaching style, partly the psychographics of the people they teach. As an educator I think it's right that edtechs can't force educators to use tools they invent, they should sell the advantages of the tool to their educator clients, which includes researching their needs in a non-trivial way. Thanks for this particularly interesting edition!
Thanks other Colin. Ed/Learning technologists absolutely have a responsibility to ensure that educators have what they need to enable good teaching practice. Which absolutely involves working with the educator to understand their context wherever possible. And for the vast majority of them/us, this is a personal principle.
Now this will, at times, conflict with directives from the academics in institutional leadership that certain tools must be used which Ed Techs are expected to enforce. (But with no power). This is where things can get messy.