After the advent of the printing press, the “mass produced” books were considered a form of technology. Today, a traditionally bound book is not regularly accepted as technology. The same goes for the pen, pencil, eraser, pencil sharpener, and many other common supplies. There was a time when pens that held ink were a novelty and treasure. Now they’re ubiquitous and cheap.
In education we split technology and curriculum into two separate departments. Pens, pencils, erasers are materials that fall directly in the curriculum department, whereas hardware, software, programming, and web design belong solely to the tech team.
It would be wonderful if the two spheres merged, so that in the education field, technology and curriculum became synonymous. In this hypothetical, creating a website and populating it with effective resources would be done by people in the same department. The creation of units, lesson plans, and materials would be done by the same educators who write code and attend the CUE Conference.
And let’s just call it all the “curriculum” department. After all, technology changes. A laptop may one day be as disposable as a pencil, but student learning will always remain important.
RISE AND CONVERGE 