Information & Communication Technology (ICT) (2006-06-22)

The flounder is out. Some of my thoughts on ICT:

My impression is that there is a general belief that the power in our society is held by the technologists - and hence we should be outfitting our young people to get ahead by making them capable technologists.

A simpler impression is 'technology is good'. Which we can take to mean that it will enable the users to do more, create more, discover more and generally have more fun.

Computers and particularly networked computers do guenuinely have amazing potential - music, composition, video, machining, design, architecture, performance, robotics, virtual reality, art, scientific inquiry, dataloging, modelling, collaborative tools, project management tools, creativity tools, refactoring tools, instant messaging, virtual communities - the list goes on and on. They are literally THE universal tool which with the smallest effort on the users part can completely change it's function. As one of the few tool using species on the planet we are getting close to taking the tool to it's logical conclusion.

But the promise of computers has been slow coming*. It is my observation that only in the last 5 years have reasonably stable and useable sound and video editing systems/software become available to the masses. Only in the last 2 years has affordable 'high' speed internet been available and affordable to the masses. Only this year can a digital camera with decent resolution be bought for under $200. The operating systems themselves (Windows, MacOS, Linux) have only become acceptably reliable in the last 4 years (particularly the Microsloth products which were terribly prone to the 'blue screen of death'). Prior to this current period doing decent quality multimedia required a small fortune and the patience of the sphinx. I think the failure of ICT to deliver so far can be mostly attributed to this wait for affordable, reliable and useable software and hardware. Let's see where it can go now!

* 'Slow' is relative thing - the PC was only first widely affordable in 1982 - 24 years ago. By comparison it took many many thousands of years to move from writing to the printing press.

On the other hand I suspect it is a mistake to over emphasise ICT - it is in the end only a series of tools and services. The ultimate meaning is in the naratives that can be conveyed in the new mediums. It would be terrible to have all the functionality of ICT available to students without any substantial forms being known or created. This is painfully obvious with the current crisis in Hollywood - visually amazing movies with outrageosly good special effects but insultingly bad stories and characters. Hollywood revenues have been consistantly going down in the last few years as a result. It's not enough to have the best toys (read facilities / tools / equipment / training) if one has nothing to say.


Another question is when and how much to use ICT. I really liked the sound of the work of Papert with his LOGO based turtle robot enhancing mathematical learning in class 1. But is there an advantage of starting with ICT this young when there are many other rich tasks that could achieve the same outcomes as the turtle? A guiding Steiner principle is 'to avoid using anything until one understands how it works'. This along with other prescriptive parts of the Steiner pedagogy usually means that ICT is not considered an appropriate tool until students reach high school. Does this mean that these students are disadvantaged compared to their state school peers? I suspect not - the learning curves are not that steep - particularly where there is a good constructivist ethos to facilitate the process when the time is right...

'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
(Arthur C Clarke)

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced"
(Anonymous)

Sources:
http://www.papert.org/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~cumulus/index.html