One of the blogs I read regularly via RSS is Kapp Notes. Karl Kapp recently blogged about being at the ICT Educator Conference where Jon Burgess, a speaker from Apple, gave a keynote speech.

According to Kapp, Burgess was critical of the typical classroom:

He spoke a great deal about the disconnect between student technology expectations and the technology available in community college and university classrooms. He spoke about students feeling that walking into a classroom was like boarding an airplane where all the technology is turned off for the duration of the flight (or classroom). He indicated technology can be better integrated into the classroom.

He could be talking about the average classroom in Singapore! So just why is integrating (not just using) technology in the classroom important?

Let me say it two ways: First, a video that I used last semester (see below).

Second, I quote some statistics from Kapp’s blog.

Jon indicated that Gen Y… has 79 million individuals which is one million more than the number of Boomers. 94% of them use the Internet to do school work. They consume, on average, 20 hours of media a day–they do that in 7 hours–so, on average, they are looking at media from 3 different sources at a time. 45% of the jobs that they will obtain haven’t been created yet. While Boomers see technology as a tool, Gen Y and Tweens see technology as an environment. Gen Y might not like to formally write but they do create 500 pages of email a year.

There are similar statistics by Pew Internet and other bodies that collect such information.

Here’s my take. We must integrate relevant technologies in our learning environments partly because digital natives already use them, want them and will work with them in the future. Just as importantly, technology can also transform the way we teach and enable individualised, self-directed, or otherwise more meaningful learning.

But just putting technology in the hands of teacher and students does not automatically transform or enable learning. That is why, my AED104 and QED522 groups, you are taking this course this semester! You need to learn technology-mediated pedagogies and practice student-centred strategies in order to engage students over the long term.