Firstly, apologies patient readers! I can’t believe it is a year since I last wrote. My excuses are many : finishing (at last!) my masters, becoming a Lead Practitioner, and enjoying my first grandchild. Enough of excuses, and on with the post.
I was delivering a seminar as a Lead Practitioner, talking about the new technologies, in particular the Kindle, the Sony ebook reader and the IPad, all of which I have. The Kindle is my own, the others belong to the school. Some discussion followed, as it usually does, about which devices are best for which purpose. Then one of the participants said that he would not bother buying any of them, he would wait for the newer versions to come along. Whilst this sounded sensible on the face of it, in actuality it showed me that he would potentially always find an excuse for putting exciting new developments off, whilst waiting for ‘the next best thing’. The thing is, with technology, there will always be a newer version. You cannot sit around whilst your pupils race ahead, or you will become an irrelevance in their world. Their phones can already access the Internet full time; it makes a nonsense of school filtering policies – but that’s another post! I have had the iPad in school now for nearly six months, and the ereaders for slightly longer. Both are regularly accessed by pupils, and there is always a queue to use the iPad. If we don’t show them, for instance, how to use these tools for enriching their lives – for studying and research, then they will only think they are ‘toys’. This blog post, for instance, has been written on the iPad. So don’t wait for ‘the next best thing’ but jump right in, embrace the new tech, buy ebooks, and become a leader for the pupils in your community – and the teachers too!
Filed under: Just thinking, Web 2.0 Tagged: | technology
