Juhan: Worst practice in providing educational technology, especially to ...

March 22, 2013 at 1:12 am

I followed an insightful chain of blog articles to this one. ?I started with Larry Cuban?s excellent piece about ?No End to Magical Thinking When It Comes to High-Tech Schooling? which cited the quote below, but first when through a really terrific analysis of the explanations that educational technology researchers sometimes make when hardware in dumped in the developing world fails to have a measurable impact. ?I highly recommend the whole sequence for a deeper understanding of what real educational reform looks like and where technology can play a role.

1. Dump hardware in schools, hope for magic to happen

This is, in many cases, the classic example of worst practice in ICT use in education.? Unfortunately, it shows no sign of disappearing soon, and is the precursor in many ways to the other worst practices on this list. ? ?If we supply it they will learn?: Maybe in some cases this is true, for a very small minority of exceptional students and teachers, but this simplistic approach is often at the root of failure of many educational technology initiatives.

via Worst practice in ICT use in education | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education.