IT for Education

I've written at length about presentation apps, office suites, mobile technology and blogs, but haven't really considered all these things within the wider context of technology in education as a whole. They are just components of a vast collection of hardware, software, practices and concepts that have been working their way into all aspects of education for decades now. Perhaps the most beneficial aspect that technology has brought to teaching is the way it has increased access to education . The rise of the web has opened the doors to the world's knowledge, now searchable and readable to anyone with a browser. It's had such a profound impact on every aspect of society it's easy to forget the World Wide Web was only invented in 1989 . This has been a double-edged sword in university teaching. With tutors able to find and use resources from anywhere on the planet it has made preparation and delivery much more effective. However it also means tutors are now comp...

If you believe Apple, we are living in a 'post-PC era' . That is certainly not true though it makes for a great sound-bite to grab some column inches, but still the importance of the desktop computer has definitely diminished in recent years. This has been driven almost entirely by the rise of alternative computing devices, including ultralight laptops, tablets and smartphones. There are many things that can be done on these types of devices that don't require a PC at all, although from personal experience a full computer makes a lot of it much more straightforward. Tablet sales are on the decline , suggesting they are not the all out replacements for the traditional box some would have us believe, though to be fair desktops have seen declining sales for years. Still, smart devices remain incredibly popular and the technological advances through the last half-decade has been nothing short of astonishing. The capabilities of a handheld device with multitudes of sensors a...

I had my first assessment on my course earlier on in the week, a 20 minute micro-teaching session. It went pretty well, but the thing I was really happy about was my slides presentation. Having to avoid anything requiring specific hardware or software meant my available pool of subjects shrank dramatically. After plans for a practical 'nature of sound' session were dashed I settled on one of the few purely theory-based subjects I've taught: semiotics. This is a subject that (for the part I would be using at least) can be taught with just a PowerPoint. My existing slides were almost entirely text free except where unavoidable, and I'd used lots of simple imagery that were meant to serve more as a backdrop to discussion than a focal point. I was aware the learner group would be vastly different to those I'd taught before, with different motives and life-directions to any of my previous students. The 20 minute cap also meant there was not the time to explore any to...