Is focus on technology in the classroom "a waste of time"?

 I want to preface this post by stating that I have worked in the ICT sector outside of education for the last 20 years and am training to become an ICT teacher.

So this blog is the first official blog for this subject and concerns the statement by Greg Whitby in response to a question asking him if we should spend a lot of time discussing what sort of technology should be used in classrooms. Greg's response was of course that "it's a waste of time" and that we "ignore the central problem"  which is "the nature and quality of the learning and teaching".

I have read many of the student blogs out there on this subject and have to say I am worried because my "gut response" to this is somewhat different to most other responses out there.

My position is that focusing on technology through discussion and investing teacher time learning and exploring technology themselves is vital to improving the quality of learning and teaching in our digital age, so to a certain extent I would have to say that I wholeheartedly disagree with Greg.

I think that technology is something that provides educators with a toolset that when used properly can greatly enhance the learning experience for the student and provide educational services that are really not possible without it. The critical thing to note is that it is a toolset not a single tool, it provides a huge variety of facilities and what's more, to utilize the facilities effectively teachers need knowledge of and familiarity with each of these different tools in order to select the ones that are relevant to their students and class.

I believe that teachers who don't put in a lot of thought and investigation into technology in the classroom will fail in both choosing the correct tools and fail to guide students in the optimal use of the technologies they currently have.

I worry when I hear the catchall phrase of technology used by educators without any understanding of its component parts. I worry when teachers adopt the attitude that we shouldn't learn about current technology because it is changing rapidly and wont be the same in 5 years time. I worry when teachers take the attitude that they don't need to understand the technology because the students do.

Educators need to know - what a mobile phone brings to the classroom, what a tablet brings to the classsroom what a laptop brings to the classroom what are the strengths and weaknesses of chromebooks, what can you do with a smartboard that is worth $10000. In what ways can they use the collaborative tools of the internet or other forms of technology. Teachers need to think about how communication facilitates communication regardless of geographical barriers. Teachers need to think about the enormous implications of the internet as a source of research information potentially at the students fingertips.

Technology seems to be a term thrown around very often as some sort of generic resource that can be thrown at a student with little consideration of what it is or what characteristics it has. A teacher would never give a student a textbook without having spent a fair bit of time discussing, considering and comparing alternatives. The same should be true for technology that is used in the classroom

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Of course educators need to focus on pedagogies and educational outcomes, however I believe that this huge new growth in the availability and importance of technology means that educators also need to exert considerable energy on understanding and keeping abreast of existing and future technologies for our classroom.

Imagine, we stand on the verge of an age where technology facilitates collaboration within the classroom or between students standing on different continents - exciting times!