Hello from Dave’s stomping grounds on the east coast of Canada.

It’s interesting and rewarding to see the shift from IT to the wider contexts in which IT acts in the latest contributions to the discussion. In the sense that educational systems are designed environments to achieve deliberate ends, they are technologies. Equally important as the technologies themselves are the values and beliefs they are intended to embody and the ends they are expected to serve. Separate them at your peril! John Chua’s note is moving towards this: “I am still a traditional believer that education is meant for evolving of society towards better value and ethics.” Patrice Choon’s reference to M.L. King points out much the same thing.

I would argue that we as educators need to look at the “technology of education” in terms of the wider trends and challenges that face the globe. Work in multiliteracies by The New London Group argues that the implications of globalization and technology are what education must respond to. Jim Cummins argues that educators should be using technology as part of pedagogies that address the inequities of power in the wider society that play themselves out in the classroom. Both these examples illustrate the connection I’m thinking about.

One final point prompted by Red Mendoza’s reference to complex tasks and Leslie Tan’s to a “cookie-cutter-age” is that ill-defined, complex problems are those intrinsic to future well-being and therefore of greatest importance to society and education. The ability to work collaboratively on these is critical: the technologies do exist to support this kind of work. Students need to learn to work on complex problems: “cookie-cutter” education is no longer adequate (if it ever was!).

Best of luck with the remainder of your course!