Our local Education authority purchases software site licenses for every school, so that all children can use Microsoft Office in the classroom.
At the same time, our Quality Teaching model espouses learning environments where childrens’ learning experiences have “significance”.
How significant is Microsoft Office in the lives of the children in our schools?
For that matter, when was the last time any of our teachers used Microsoft Office for a non-work-related activity?
One of the main justifications for the wide-spread use of ICT in our classrooms is to make learning experiences relevant and meaningful for our students. Learning experiences of significance.
I have been paying some careful attention over the last 12 months to how teenagers use ICT in their day-to-day lives.
“Texting” on cell phones is without too much doubt the most-often-used tool in the teenager’s communications quiver, due to it’s high mobility factor. You can send and receive messages where ever you are (or where ever there is cell-phone access!).
12 months ago I would have said that the next most popular technology was “Chat” using msn, iChat, etc.
Chat seems to have been eclipsed in popularity in more recent times by Facebook. In this part of the world, with teenagers at least, Facebook seems to be more popular than MySpace, though this seems to remain a popular option for younger students.
And of course YouTube is right up there, but in a different context. YouTube is a little bit about communication (if the students are publishing their own clips), but a lot about entertainment.
Facebook, chat and text are a tech-savvy teenager’s preferred communication mediums. I haven’t seen one – not one – teenager using Powerpoint or Word as a presentation/communication tool in their personal world.
So, why do we persist with busily designing teaching programs around the use of Microsoft Office?
I think that the answer is obvious – we design our teaching programs around office suites because we design our programs with office suites. As adults we have conquered them. We have mastered them. We feel comfortable with them. Office suites are manageable and the results are controllable.
But are office suites relevant to the personal lives of our students? Does the use of such software in our classrooms make our curriculum more relevant and meaningful? Does it help bring significance to their learning experiences?
And have you noticed the other “adult” technology missing from this discussion? One that is rarely used by students in their personal world?
You guessed it – email.
Who needs email when you have Facebook?
For teenagers, technology is all about communication – sharing their lives with each other.
We need to make sure that our learning tools stay relevant to the lives of our students. As adults, we need to explore these new (mostly Web 2.0) resources. We need to adopt these technologies in our personal lives, and adapt them to enhance our learning environments. To provide a Quality Teaching environment we need to ensure our students’ learning experiences have significance.
Do you have a Facebook account? What are your friends doing now? Who has been writing on your wall? Have you updated your photo album?
Time to get started > www.facebook.com
