"iSatan and the death of common sense" Topic

I just sat through a two hour presentation from members of the iCthullu cult. Their purpose was to show how a teacher can walk into a classroom with a with their iPad or iPhone and if some type of Apple local wifi is loaded on their iMac they can conduct their classroom "untethered" from the teacher podium.

All I could think is load your presentation on your friggin network drive which every teacher has and then use the blasted $18 wireless mouse that every classroom computer is equipped with if you want to wander about.

Talk about technological overkill. But I have already lost the political war over IT at my institution. We are paying ten grand to equip a room I could do for three. But they are "certified" IT specialists and I am just a lowly librarian.

Time to poor up another rum and coke.

We have much the same problem here in the district in North Western Canada where I work. I am just an aide, not a teacher, but I have frequent discussions with the teaching staff about the how much UN-needed technology we are getting in the classrooms. Some of it I can see having eventual practical applications. Meanwhile we still cannot access student timetables or grades half the time because the on-line database is on the fritz. September of last year we couldn't register some students for over a week because the whole registration database went down province wide. Now the provincial government has had to admit the software is flawed and will have to be replaced. Unfortunately they have all-ready sunk $89 Million into the development of the software.

link

Cheers.
GeorgeD

Even 'educators' are dazzled by 'Oh, shiny…'

Actually ipads etc do have their place in education – certainly at our place. We've just bought a couple to trial with what we call our foundation students. These are students with all sorts of learning, mental, behavioural difficulties, and things like this and the Wii really help enrich the lessons of these kids (and adult) who struggle with a mouse or keyboard.

You situation does sound a bit daft though – we do get similar wastes of money (top end laptops for the governors who meet a couple of times a month – and these laptops are not utilised apart from then – 16 laptops better than anything staff and students have access too!)

Meh.
Kids used to learn plenty well without an electronic devices in the classroom at all.

Nowadays, most of them don't seem to learn squat. Fancy gadgets aren't going to fix that, nor is it generally the teachers' fault. The government(s) just want to throw money, instead of making proper reforms.
-Kle.

Kle,

BINGO!

Unfortunately, people with a medium level of computer skills (which generally is the max that anyone at a managerial level has*) are the people who are most likely to be influenced by the "It's NEW and BRIGHT, and SHINEY" sales pitch.

I've heard my companies salesmen get all excited that we need to sell the iPads so that our customers can use them anywhere in the field, we have to jump on this, and then get all surprised when they hear that we have been selling laptops with wireless/Bluetooth that do that for the last 5 years…

*I said generally, I acknowledge there are exceptions.

"untethered" from the teacher podium.

It's been a long time since I have been in a classroom at any level. Are conditions so bad you have to chain them down now?

I'm with you KLH. I retired when I realized the new level of computer usage that would be required and, oh yeah, all those "tests" that were going to motivate the students. Right!

i was an unrepentant luddite. i now repent. the ipad CAN be a sensational classroom tool.

the ipad CAN be a sensational classroom tool.

I didn't mean to imply that it can't. All the cool new A/V stuff that's available nowadays can undoubtedly be used to good effect in the classroom. It won't do the job by itself though, and it won't solve any of the underlying problems in US education. Not sure it's the best use of government money in the current economy/budgetary environment, either.
-Kle.

The only issue I see with this is infrastructure. Most K-12 have less bandwith than your home ISP account.

IIRC our Highschool has 1.5 Mb DOWN

I've been teaching college level courses for over eight years, and have spent less than eight minutes behind a podium :) No tethers for me.

I finally got a digital projector installed in my primary classroom, I can't tell you how much better that is compared to a slide projector… nice to have some tech progress.