The Wave... what are the implications for teaching and learning?

Prensky wipe the smile off your face...

I have to admit that if there is one author I find a challenging read, it is Marc Prensky, his 'Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom' continued to make me feel concern as to whether he is actually an educationalist or not. I feel he is so absorbed into technology that he has actually lost sight of the greater aspects of education.

One of the great things that education can promote in society is social justice, however if not delivered appropriately, education merely reinforces social inequalities. Prensky is pushing for an education system which is for the global elite, the effect of this merely will reinforce the social inequalities we see in society.

If you take the time to go to Global Rich List and type in your annual income, you soon realise the reality of the world. Three billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. One to one computers in all schools... haven't we lost the plot? How are the majority of the world going to afford this when they struggle to access clean water. Prensky seems to be lost from reality as shown in comments such as:

'But resisting today's digital technology will be truly lethal to our children's education'

and...

'They (students) not only need things faster than their teachers are used to providing them, they also have many other new learning needs as well, such as random access to information and multiple data streams'

Resisting technology ...lethal? Multiple data streams as a need...why? Such 'needs' are not needs at all. Students today need to learn to live without limitless technology. Students need to be challenged to use technology to create action, action that promotes change, after all how can we achieve Prensky's edutopia without such social justice.

Utopia, an imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia' (1516) as enjoying perfection in law and politics, is a term now associated with perfection and idealism. Edutopia, a state of perfection in edcuation is idealistic and in reality, it is unrealistic.

The MacArthur Report clearly points out in its conclusions that there are a number of barriers to online participation (economic, institutional, social and cultural), these are embedded within greater societal issues that cannot be solved with a change in the educational system as suggested by Prensky.

I've vented enough. I don't agree with many of Prensky's perspectives, but I do believe he has some validity in the four step process of adopting technology that he suggests:

1. Dabbling.
2. Doing old things in old ways.
3. Doing old things in new ways.
4. Doing new things in new ways.

Schools are slow to take on technology, and when they do, they tend to rely on the old ways of doing things. Education does need a bit of a shake up, but I firmly don't believe that technology is the key solution. Technology will play a role, and as the MacArthur report suggests, it is impossible to disconnect today's youth from it, however perhaps what we need to see now is technology branching out from a consumer model to an action model.