I'll steal this tablet right out of your pocket!
Many critics of contemporary schooling practices have noted that, if a teacher from the 19th century was magically transported into a typical classroom today, she would feel very comfortable with how things look. The room itself would be very familiar.
(Whether that teacher would be comfortable with today's students is another matter entirely, given that they probably look a little different than they did 'back in the day' -- to say nothing of how they might act and some of the opinions they might have!)
Contrast this, such critics note, with the situation of a surgeon from the 19th century teleported into an operating room today -- he would be bewildered, and perhaps disoriented, by all of the technology on display.
Few would deny that, in many fundamental and obvious ways, technology has revolutionalized medicine and healthcare.
Why hasn't it done so (yet) for learning and education?
One way that critics illustrate and reinforce this question is to share pictures of 'typical' operating rooms in the 19th and 21st centuries, alongside pictures of 'typical' classrooms from both centuries. The classrooms in such examples usually do look quite the same, with a teacher standing at the front of the room and neatly lined up rows of students intently (if metaphorically) drinking from the fountain of the teacher's knowledge. The chief noticeable difference (again, apart from the students themselves -- and the teachers as well) is that there are now computing devices of some sort on display in the 'modern' classroom, sometimes (depending on the country) lots of them, although the room essentially looks and functions the same way. The arrangement and nature of these ICT devices don't fundamentally alter the architecture of the room, nor what occurs inside it. In others words, the changes are additive, not transformative. (It is of course possible to provide pictures of some of today's 'innovative'classrooms that complicate this simple and popular narrative, as well as to ask some fundamental and important questions about what such pictures may obscure and what they illuminate, but I'll ignore such inconvenient complications here.)
Side note: Over a dozen years ago I visited the launch of a computer lab at a school in Cambodia. The headmaster had proudly transformed a room formerly used for sewing instruction into a 'technology lab', with a new PC atop each desk in place of the 'old-fashioned' technology of the sewing machine, with neat rows of students facing forward toward a teacher who was energetically shouting instructions.
Let's also put aside for a moment whether all of this technology 'makes a difference' (as well as perhaps more relevant questions about how and under what circumstances ICTs have an 'impact'). Let's ignore discussions about whether or not today's classrooms are a legacy of a 'factory model of education' that once existed but is no longer useful, or about the potential need to re-think school architecture in the age of ICT. Let's also ignore related 'big picture' issues around policymaking and planning.
Let's focus instead just on the technology itself.
Many regular readers of the EduTech blog are no doubt familiar with scenes of ICT equipment sitting unused in schools, locked away in computer labs or even still resting peacefully (and undamaged!) in unopened boxes. Often times, getting teachers and students to use such equipment, let alone to use it 'productively', can be a rather tall order, for all sorts of reasons. Nevertheless, education ministries, local educational authorities, and schools around the world are buying lots of technology: PCs, laptops, tablets, projectors, and lots of other devices and peripherals.
What are they doing to make sure that this stuff doesn't get stolen?
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