Russell Stannard won a British Council Innovations Award in 2010 for his www.teachertrainingvideos.com website, as well he was awarded Outstanding Initiative in ICT award by the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2008, and the Teflnet website of the year award in 2009. On May 5 he wrote a guest piece for Ken Wilson's Blog (again well worth following).
Stannard makes 10 very interesting points that are worth following up:
1. The key to training in technology starts with the pedagogy
2. Technology is still far from being accepted.
3. In most cases a one computer to one student scenario is not desirable.
4. Technology is undermining the power of many of the large organisations that have controlled a lot of what we consider to be culture.
5. Few of us really think about how much of a technology trail we are creating. In theory, every text, email, Facebook comment, search or chat we have ever made is logged somewhere.
6. On the whole, young people are better at operating the technology but it doesn’t mean they automatically know how to use it beneficially for their learning.In fact, they often have quite blinkered views of the way that a certain technology can be exploited.
7. I really have my doubts about Interactive Whiteboards. I am not dismissing them totally but I feel that in most cases the money could be spent on other things like training teachers, getting a good broadband connection or buying three or four extra laptops for a class (IWBs cost around £2,000 and laptops around £500).
8. The hype that surrounds technology has a lot to answer for. I started to really take an interest in computers in about 1995. I was seduced by talk of video content and video conferencing on the web.But it is now sixteen years later and in truth they still don’t work the way I had imagined!!
9. I am still not convinced by Smart Phones. I know that they have a lot of capabilities, but I just think the screen sizes are too limiting.
10. Despite everything I love technology. It frustrates me, it confuses me, I battle to understand the direction it is taking, I hate all the hype that surrounds it and get fed up when the internet connection goes down. But I honestly believe that technology is going to play a big future in the lives of many young people. So is English. So if I use technology in my English classes I am in effect double preparing them for the future – and that can’t be a bad thing.
