Many schools will be returning in the next week or so with the exciting prospect of using upgraded or completely new technologies to support learning and teaching. Some of this will involve mobile technology which in many cases will be iPads or other tablet technology.
Will this change teaching and learning in the school? It should!!
If you always do what you've always done without the new technology available to you, you have missed a trick. Just putting a set of iPads in front of a class of children will not raise standards... neither will reporting to the head teacher that the children are 'very excited' by the new resources.
By providing such resources you are putting much more learning power in the hands of the children and relinquishing some of the power that comes with knowledge. The balance shifts... or it should.
Obviously there are basic skills which need to be developed by young children (or non-numerate or non-literate teens and adults for that matter) otherwise how are they going to access all of the resources available to them?
The blog post here may make interesting reading, with parallels being drawn between Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 with 'Education 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Very thought provoking.
