Reflections

After briefly summarizing educational research and the potential for the integration of ICTs into the classroom Romeo goes on in his discussion to give two visions for the future of education.  Both are extreme examples of in which direction technology could head.

Scenario 1 seems to involve a school comprehensively run almost solely by technology, and comparisons to Orwell’s 1984 would certainly not be far adrift.  Social interaction has given way to solo learning monitored electronically.

Whilst both scenarios involve extensive use of technology, the somewhat romanticized notion of Scenario 2 is presented as a desirable future outcome.  Granted, the author does point out that Scenario 2 is idealistic, involving totally transformed workspaces integrating technology seamlessly into the classroom.  Technology is used to enrich the tasks and not replace human interaction.  The setting is not the typical setting seen in schools today, and given the description of learning space the classroom would have to be enormous.

The major point of the discussion is to analyse how students learn and how ICT can be used to assist student learning and begin to plan for a future where the goal is to combine technology so as to maximise student learning.

I suppose the article does raise the interesting point of the potential future uses of technology not only as an education tool, but as a behavior management/monitoring assistant.  Questions of surveillance and privacy are always sensitive issues and I could imagine vocal opposition to uses of technology in this fashion.

Despite the idealism involved I like the picture painted by the author.  In a period in time where public schools sometimes don’t get adequate funding to even provide for rare computer access, the classroom utopia presented above feels very distant, but I suppose it is worthwhile having something to aim at.

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