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Several attendees of the South Carolina EdTech conference have very generously commented on my keynote presentation yesterday in Myrtle Beach — in front of a most hospitable and enthusiastic audience. A couple of the comments suggested that, like many keynotes at ed tech conferences, I am preaching to the choir, that they do not need to hear how important technology is.
Well, obviously I need to work on my presentations, because I think that technologist, more than anyone else, need to hear the message that I deliver when I talk about learning and literacy. The conclusion that I stated, both at the end and at the beginning of my presentation was this — and please forgive my shouting, but:
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY!
IT’S ABOUT THE INFORMATION!
and I said,
STOP INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY!
INTEGRATE LITERACY!
🙂
I showed the picture of Martin, my son, sitting in his cockpit (sofa) playing his video game, listening to his iPod, and IMing his friends, and I suggested that if he were to reflect on his experience, and try to identify what it is that is the root of what he is doing, he would say nothing about technology. He was say that it’s the information that he sees, types into his controller and keyboard, listens to in his headset and speaks into the microphone. For our kids, its the new information landscape that they are interacting with.
I think that if technologists spent less time thinking about the machine, and more time thinking about providing a new information landscape in the teaching and learning experiences of their schools, then we may make better use of the machines.
Again, what a wonderfully warm and gracious audience the SCEdTech was. I certainly wish that I could have stayed for the second day of the conference.
technorati tags:warlick, education, literacy, technology, scedtech, scedtech06
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