A dear friend of mine posted this on his blog.  Great stuff.  I think that far too often, people want to stick tech in the classroom just for the sake of doing so and for being able to say that they’re doing it.  It goes back to that whole “Digital Facelift” thing.  No substance.

I have never had an interest in taking classes online.  I have hated every online component of every class I’ve taken in college.  I find blackboard to be abhorrent in just about every way.  It’s what prompted my hatred for “e-learning” and LMSs.  And I. Am. Not. Alone.  But I realize that it’s not online courses themselves, or edtech in general that bothers me.  It’s certain programs that don’t do what they should – use technology to enhance teaching and learning.

I agree with Dan that social networking is integral to the future of learning tech.  Do you know how many things I learn from what my friends post on facebook?  I get most of my news that way, though maybe I shouldn’t be admitting it.  My friends post links to news and opinion articles all the time, tutorials, satires, topical memes, all of these, more often than not, with the posting friends’ commentary attached, sometimes leading to lengthy discussions in the comments.  I only noticed Dan’s most recent blog post because it popped up on my facebook news feed!

There are educational social networks, like ning.  It is no secret that I hate nings as well.  I’ve never really been able to pinpoint exactly what my beef is with ning, but I’ve always found it to be a nuisance rather than a learning aid.  I’ve been told to look at it as a resource, rather than another item on my to-do list, but I’ve just never been able  to do so.  Still, everyone else seems to find them useful, so maybe it’s just me.

The point is this: You can’t treat technology in the classroom as its own end.  You need the RIGHT tech and to use it correctly.  Part of that problem is that many teachers don’t know what they should be using or how they should be using it.  There’s also a popular misconception that the students are already going to be familiar with or be able to quickly catch on to the new technology, which may often be the case, but certainly not always  (I, for one, frequently have my computer literacy overestimated. And by quite a large margin.  This blog, you may notice, is not exactly bursting with tech-savvy; it has no bells, no whistles and almost everything on here so far is the result of some sort of struggle).  It doesn’t help matters when teachers, hearing all the great possibilities of a web-enabled class, are made to use blackboard and such.  Not only is it basically garbage, but it can give a teacher (or student) the wrong idea about classroom technology if it’s the first bit they’re exposed to.  It happened to me.  Only now after years of blindly, yet passionately, hating online class stuff, am I starting to see the light.