This entry was recently posted on “The ThinkingStick“, Jeff Utecht’s site. Copied here for developing some additional thoughts.
Integrate and embed are both good words. Like Jeff, I lean towards the latter as more consistent with a more intuitive and natural approach to technology as a tool.
The issue remains that, for education at least, we still have a predominance of leadership at the highest levels that don’t have a clue about technology. In their minds, that’s why they hire technology directors and form technology committees – to do what they can’t.
So beyond the suggestions above of disbanding the technology committee, what we need is leadership that is tech. competent and immersed. More than that – we need administrators that are in love with technology because they have the vision of what is possible. They’ve got to have the spark, the twinkle in the eye when they see the utility of online collaboration, and world wide video streams and twitter based micro-blogs, and and and…..
When that happens to a critical mass of our leaders and when “Technology Directors” are all but extinct, then we might be approaching the stage of “embeded.”
I want what Jeff wants – classrooms oozing with technology that is not seen as technology – but only as fixtures in a classroom that allow kids to access their learning. Like the faucet in the corner that provides vital hydration, I want kids walking up to interactive devices that seem like nothing more than furniture in the classroom. They touch them and a world appears giving them access to whatever their mind desires. A teacher is there guiding the interaction, but the learner drives the process (shouldn’t that be true all the time). How many can actually picture that vision?