Mark Perensky said some very interesting things in an interview at the IATEFL conference in Cardiff. He raised for example the issue of the relationship between modern technology and teachers and said:
Before you can take advantage of modern technology, you have to change pegagogy.
I couldn’t agree more. We are flooded with new tools that aim to enhance our teaching practices. And too many CALL workshops focus on what needs to be clicked on to make a tool functional. But untill it’s not clear to us what pedagogical assumptions lie behind the new tool and what change it would bring to our teaching practices, we should not use it. However, once we are comfortable with the change in the pedagogy and the new tool, we can do wonders.
Also, Perensky suggests that schools should invest in modern technology wisely: some of the tools (e.g. interactive board) are very expensive and the scool would be better of investing that money into something that would be more useful to their students (e.g. 3D printers, iphones, etc.).
Finally, I support another idea of Perensky:
Governments should invest into pedagogy … and technology will actually take care of itself.
Here’s the video.
