Ed-Tech, Tech-education and Education about Tech

A few months ago, Teacher Plus (a monthly magazine for school) looked at technology in education. The issue brought together a variety of perspectives, experiences and ideas all to do with how technology had impacted the process and product of education. Many of the articles can be seen online here:

http://www.teacherplus.org/category/2009/december-2009

What we were attempting to do here was to bring teachers a sense of how technology can be used in the classroom and outside, to enrich themselves and to bring new and different resources into their practice, but also to be critical about technology and what it does to us even as we (often unthinkingly) make it an integral part of our lives. This is something that bears thinking about in every realm of life.

More recently (just today, in fact) I finished grading the final exam for a semester long course on Issues in ICTs, a course that is offered to the MA-Communication students at the University of Hyderabad. The course takes a broad look at the development and the politics of new media, theories of the information society, impact of new technology, issues of identity and community in the networked society, and so on. Topics, one would think, are the stuff of the everyday in the lives of the digital natives that form my student community. But having reviewed the papers, it would appear that new media and ICTs have become such a natural part of their lives that they find it impossible to stand back or step aside from their immediate use and take a critical look. I wonder then about the essential disconnect here: as a teacher, and someone who has watched these technologies unfold and occupy certain positions in our work and leisure, analysis of their impact is almost second nature. But for my students, these technologies (mobile phones, iPods and MP4 players, smart phones and tablet PCs) are all nothing more than everyday tools that they do not separate from the rest of the environment. "What's the big deal?" they ask, when one comments on the way things have changed over the past ten or fifteen years. "This is how it's been as far as I know."

Given this difference in experiences and perspectives, is it at all possible for someone who is a digital migrant to teach a course on technological change/impact to a bunch of students who are digital natives? Is it somewhat like a well informed foreigner serving as a tourist guide to a bunch of locals? After all, is there any point to dissecting an effect that has already occurred? Of course, one cannot be an academic and not believe there is value in understanding something, from within or without, from a number of perspectives, so I suppose the effort to understand cannot stop.