The Report said:
“IN recent years many have argued that the use of new technology is to improve the efficiency of traditional instructional methods will result in limited progress at best. This view holds that the real promise of technology in education lies in its potential to facilitate fundamental, qualitative changes in the nature of teaching and learning.”

“While the educational research community has by no means reached a final consensus on the best way to educate children, a large part of that community has in recent years converged on a course set of pedagogic principles that form the basis of the constructivist paradigm. By contrast with the more traditional view of instruction as a process involving the transmission of facts from an active teacher to a passive student, constructivist believe that learning occurs through a process in which the student plays an active role in construction the set of conceptual structures that constitute his or her own knowledge base.

In order to cultivate this ground, schools will need to make changes that extend far beyond the mere installation of a network of computers. Such fundamental restructuring, however, is likely to prove complex, difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, and may encounter resistance from parents, educators and the general public, particularly to the extent that such changes conflict with commonly held beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning.”

In his way, Ken Robinson said almost exactly the same thing in his report on “Creativity, Culture and Education” in 1999. If we want enterprising, thoughtful youngsters, then we have to understand the learning process better. We have to educate people differently. Technology could play a dynamic role.

One final thought. Every moment of every day our brains are besieged by too much information. In sorting out what to notice and what to ignore the brain deals first with the unexpected, the novel. That is largely why I’m the only one today not to use a PowerPoint presentation (and I make a serious not, I hope, a cheap point). Communication is a much broader topic than information communication, and even that covers more than computers, and more than emails. Young people need to be able to judge which is the most appropriate technology for a particular task.

Let me share a secret. Long ago I was told that, to survive as a good leader, every day I should divide my in-tray into the urgent, and the important – and leave the urgent to someone else; my job was to deal with the important.

I still do this so I have most emails printed out for me. My desk is buried deep in paper and of course you’ve noticed…..every email looks almost exactly alike; there is very little aesthetically pleasing about an email. They are bland. But a fax….that can be so different. It often has a log, and an idiosyncratic writing style and often an indecipherable signature. It almost begs to be picked up!

Instant communication is good for some things, but not, I believe, for everything. I am, disturbed at how many senior academics have apparently become infatuated with emails and mobile phones that they have got rid of their secretaries (these they no longer see as being necessary!). They have now become so busy – they often seem like the academic equivalent of a trader on the floor of the stockmarket – that they can no longer properly attend to the important issues that should be their bread and butter.

So I ask you….is all yet well with IT for the young (and not so young)?

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