Over at the Digital Education blog, my colleague, Katie Ash, has an interesting report on a discussion she heard at the Northwest Council for Computer Education’s “Navigating the New World With Technology” conference in Portland.
Debra Pickering, author of several books about teaching and learning that she’s co-wrote with Robert Marzano, gave the keynote address about building lessons that incorporate technology. It’s about the lesson, not the technology, Pickering said.
From Katie’s post: “At the root of those questions was something I hear over and over again from the ed-tech community—don’t use technology for technology’s sake. Just because you can use technology doesn’t always mean you should, Pickering stressed. Without a clear purpose and effective integration, technology doesn’t add anything to the lesson and could even be more distracting, she said.”
A decade or so ago, the prevailing conversation was more about the hardware, but now there is more and more discussion about the substance of learning, and how to use technology to deliver that content and improve learning.
