Learning Technology Challenge. It’s not the Technology.

By Nick Hodge | March 26, 2007

As highlighted by one of Australia’s leading Social Networking thinkers in Education, Mike Seyfang, technology in schools is already in schools. Mobile phones, the MSN Messenger communities, blogs, Myspace, Wikipedia: these technologies are being used by students today.

One pervasive technology that hounds parents today is the use of MSN Live Messenger. It’s the standard tool for all kids today. Without Messenger, kids are outcasts from their social networks. They use it to gossip (like the telephone of previous eras) and to collaborate on school projects. And probably bully, too. In all instances, collaboration is king. Today, the ability to collaborate in work and life scenarios is underdeveloped in K-12 (especially at the pointy end of K-12) as the focus moves to individual achievement.

Unless you are stuck on a deserted island, your life is going to be collaborative. Work, too. In a connected world, this is amplified and packetised.

What is needed is policy and technology-frameworks to unlock the power of the networks that exist. It might be Single-Sign-on (sometimes referred to SSO), firewalls and other pieces of technology that corporations already use. Microsoft (my employer) eats its own dogfood: smartcards, firewalls, network security and the like.

However, it is my contention that the first hurdle isn’t the technology: it’s enabling the passionate teachers to engage in the learning networks. Removing the blockages of knee-jerk blanket restrictions — as they do not work. Remember, the internet was designed to deal with failure and route around it. Censorship is classed as a failure, and therefore is routed around.

I’d love to hear teacher stories.

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Learning Technology Challenge. It’s not the Technology.

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