It’s ICT

It’s not about the technology, but about a new information landscape.  Technology is merely the way that we navigate it.

I landed in Fredericton, New Brunswick last night.  I’d thought it would be shortly after nine, but it was actually shortly after ten.  I need to find out if I’m east of Easter Standard Time, or simply not observing daylight saving time. 

It’s a provincial conference that I’ll be working, delivering two keynotes and a number of presentations on web 2.0 applications.  I do not know enough about this province’s technology initiative to comment yet, especially as it would appear that it was about the technology.  As Andrew Pass commented on Are Computers a Tool?

I think it’s dangerous to put too much of an emphasis on the importance of computers.

Too true.  As we talk about technology integration, most of the rest of the world talks about ICT — Information and Communication Technologies.  It’s an interesting label, because it seems to qualify the word technology by applying it to information and the flow of information.  Of course, we’ve had information and communication technologies before, and we didn’t call them that, and we didn’t need information and communication technology integrationists,

    But what’s changed

        is

            Change!

Alan Kay is credited with the phrase, “‘Technology’ is anything that was invented after you were born!”  We certainly a lot of what we use to manage information was invented after we were born.  Satellites didn’t exist when I was born.  So since so much of this is new, not a part of our cultural sense of how we work, then these IC technologies are something that we have to spend a lot of time talking about.  But I agree entirely with Andrew’s statement.  There be dragons in these woods.

I’ll say it again, because it will be a major part of my message here in Fredericton, that it isn’t how technologies have changed that is causing those who are paying attention to rethink education.  It’s how the landscape has changed.

  1. The world economy is changing — becoming much more global and cooperative.
  2. Our customers are changing — today’s students are accustomed to a type of information experience that is completely different and dramatically richer than that of their parents and teachers.
  3. The very nature of information has changed — becoming more networked, digital, overwhelming, and a number of other characteristics that the information landscape has taken on in just the last five years.

I will mostly be talking about number three, but it is this changing landscape that we need to be talking about, that needs to be driving our decisions and plans.  Computers are merely THE tool that we use to navigate it.


Image Citation:
Dame, Ed. “Compass.” Ed Dame’s Photostream. 21 May 2006. 21 Mar 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/edame/150767567/>.

5 thoughts on “It’s ICT”

  1. Dave,
    What resonated most for me with this post is your second point –
    Our customers are changing — today’s students are accustomed to a type of information experience that is completely different and dramatically richer than that of their parents and teachers.
    I always try to be student focused and in an attempt to create learning opportunities that are not irrelevant, it is vital that we understand the needs of our students. Otherwise, we will continue to offer them a school environment that has no connection to their world. And we will lose them. Yes, they will go through the motions. But at what cost?

  2. It’s worth noting, since you quoted Alan Kay, that his view of computing – the one that led him to invent the term personal computer and design the Dynabook – bares little resemblance to most of today’s discussions about information.

    I’m severely condensing his ideas, but Kay & Papert, view information access – even the sharing of information, as a very low-level use of technology. I agree.

    It is the computational power and act(s) of computing that makes “technology” intellectually powerful and a force for change.

    Much of the “technology” and practices I hear discussed at conferences these days are hardly modern. In fact, interactive white boards, clickers, teacher amplification systems and in many cases, even blogging, are Pre-Gutenberg uses of “technology.”

    Personally, I find the very use of the term, “technology,” to be curious. I’ve been around long enough to remember when the “C” in “NECC” and “CUE” used to mean the verb, computing. There was the Computing Teacher Magazine (now Learning and Leading with Technology) and Classroom Computer Learning Magazine (now Technology and Learning). Kids used to “compute” with computers, now they do just about everything but construct software and explore the science of complexity made possible by the presence of computational power.

    I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that there may have been a clandestine meeting in the late 1980s where it was decided that school computers would no longer be promoted as what Danny Hillis called, “An Imagination Machine,” and would be relegate to tools of they system.

    We now say “technology” when we usually mean “computer.” Such rhetorical slight-of-hand provides cover for those interested in not changing educational practice or expectations. I wish I had a nickel for every keynote speaker who said, “The computer is JUST technology, like a pencil or Pez dispenser.”

    This severely diminishes the transformational potential of the computer and leaves it safely in the hands of forces content with school as they are.

  3. After reading From Papert’s article “Computer as Material: Messing About with Time”

    The 5 important guidelines at the end are timeless. I reworded them –

    1. Seek open-ended projects that involve all the materials available to us
    2. Encourage activites in which students solve real problems
    3. Connect the school day and the world
    4. Recognize the unique qualities of technology and what these bring to the classroom
    5. Take advantages of all technology that integrates us with the real world.

    and then perhaps at the risk of over-simplfying:

    The classroom and the outside world can be one world where we’ll work, communicate, and solve problems.

    We need to get one powerful story that everyone is ready to embrace. Seems like it’s still easy for teachers to grab the questions at the end of the book and turn that assignment into a blog. – Transformational power, zero.

  4. I’m wrestling with the semantics here. Computers can be a tool; technology can be simple; the “information landscape” is changing at breathtaking speed. I’m about to interview a whole mess of 20-30-somethings about how well they feel prepared to do what they have to do, how much re-tooling they’ve done since they graduated (most from college) and what TOOLS they use to their work. 21st century skills may be not as important as the attitudes, the habits of mind, of flexibility, adaptability and a willingness to take risks and learn–same as in the 20th century! Everyone still has to READ to do their work, whether it’s from a CD projected on a screen, a manual written by someone whose fifth language is English, a blog or a web page. I’ll be really curious to see what those who are in a position to hire folks younger than themselves find lacking in their potential employees. Is it skills they lack? Or is the complaint really about attitudes toward real work? Thinking, organizing, decision making, consensus building . . .

  5. Maureen,

    You ask an interesting question.

    I suspect that there is a timeless tradition of the current generation bemoaning both the skills and work ethic of the next generation. We’ve all heard the canard about how “kids today can’t even fill out a job application.”

    That may be true, but in kids in previous generations could not do so either. The difference was that their father or uncle could get them in the union. There is a shortage of union and blue collar jobs that pay a living wage today. Many people argue that this is the result of business practices (ie… offshoring) and cynical drive to reduce wages, not the failure of public education.

    However, the NCLB emphasis on name calling and the bulimic curriculum (binge and purge) is reducing the quality of the very same workforce the standardistos want us to believe they are helping.

    I’ve been all over the world. It takes half a day to drive a few miles in Mumbai and thousands of people die when it rains. I gave my Indian driver the leftover change in my pocket and it was the equivalent of 30 months rent for him and his extended family. His MIDDLE-CLASS willingness to work for $2/day makes it difficult for my son to make a living wage working at Sears. (By the way, the driver was quite bright and articulate.)

    I’ve been to Japanese department stores (remember when the Japanese were the economic threat) and watched 3-5 employees work the cash register. The same stores had two women working in each automatic elevator. One pushed the button for you and the other got out at each floor and pointed to the open lift. Somehow I don’t imagine that these workers excelled at calculus.

    We can do better by our children. We know that and most of us know how as well. We just lack the political will and personal courage to do so.

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