Quite recently, the director of Partners in Learning at Microsoft Canada said at a seminar in Vancouver, "Our schools are like jails–brick walls, colourless, not very engaging or exciting."Tablets and styluses were recommended. Even if the director was also seeking Microsoft's interest, the question ought to be seriously addressed.
The usual argument is that traditional teaching methods are too passive and do not inspire creative thinking. This is exacerbated, it is claimed, by the fact that most students spend a lot of time online at home and therefore similar technology should be used for teaching and learning.The experience is that, in both industrial and educational sectors, introduction of technology does not necessarily or automatically lead to improvements in productivity and creativity.
One senior professor from the UWI pointed out that despite the number of computers introduced at the institution, he is yet to see an improvement in the quality of the outputs.The tendency to overhype the benefits of technology is well known. A few decades ago, it was proclaimed that Artificial Intelligence technologies, Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic etc, would render many human functionaries redundant. It did not happen.
But as the technologies matured, they have become standard in many applications, but not quite that of the initial predictions.A case in point is the use of PowerPoint presentations. There are many really fancy presentations that are not only superficial but also boring.The stress, many a time, is on impressing the audience with technical skills and not the subject matter. So they can be insipidly boring.
Inspiration and creative thinking are more likely to be the product of good teaching and mentoring. Creativity can, has and will continue to be expressed through traditional, new and evolving technologies. In other words, the evidence points to technology, both traditional and digital, as the media for expressing creativity.
Interestingly, there is a renewed interest in the positive benefits of hand writing. It requires sustained and focussed attention to what is being written and hence it has a beneficial impact on learning.Many are of the view that writing should be retained and maybe emphasised together with the use of stylus and keyboard.
Hand sketching is even making a comeback in engineering curricula, for it is felt that it enhances the creative design process.One area of deep concern is that allowing students to use technological aids from an early age has led to, at best, a superficial understanding of subject matter and deficiencies in critical skills.
Some time ago, the criticism of memory-based learning was at an all-time high. Learning by rote was viewed as almost taboo. One outcome of this was open-book tests. Well guess what! Students do not perform better in open-book tests and the weaker ones are more likely to do worse.To access and apply principles and data require an understanding of the principles and application procedures. Understanding requires study, reflection and memorisation.
There can be no intelligence without memorisation. Sure, there is a fantastic amount of information available on Google, literally at one's fingertip. But during the search one must remember synonyms, antonyms and similar words for successful search.So the decision should not be to replace pen and paper with the stylus and tablet but rather to have them as complementary technologies. From a pragmatic point of view, writing is, at this time, indispensable and would remain so for the foreseeable future.
Digital technology is assuming greater importance in many aspects of life, including the education system, but its introduction needs be carefully thought out.Before dispensing with traditional teaching technology, we should dispense with poor and ineffective teaching methods.Exciting education needs good teaching more than digital technology.