Education and New Technologies

Education has always been quick to embrace the latest technologies and to harness them to its ends. Wax tablets, books, film, sound strip, video, PowerPoint, YouTube Clips et al have been enlisted to the service of education. Throughout this process, the introduction of new technologies has changed the way in which teachers present information to students. To date, they have had a much greater impact on teaching than they have on learning. In most classrooms, the relationships remain the same: the teacher is at the front imparting information and explaining concepts to students who sit before them. Likewise, the fundamentals of independent learning remain unchanged with students still working from printed textbooks, completing tasks set by their teachers, both in and away from the classroom setting. The introduction of ICT into schools, thus far, has had minimal impact on this process – notes may be held electronically, research may be on the Internet, assignments may be word-processed, pupils may put together a PowerPoint presentation which can be emailed to teachers, but fundamentally little has really altered. But this is about to change . . . . the “Mobile Learning” revolution is here.