Is Technology driving Ed? or Ed driving Technology?

The discussion had around the ideas of "Hidden Curriculum" are well documented over time! But in my world I hear very little discussion about what the effect technology is having on us as teachers and the knock on effect on our students.

In Australia we have a show called Q&A and education was the topic last night. During the discussion a politician continually reflected that teaching is the number 1 cause of student results! The message behind that is that if results are poor then teaching is poor! However I do not believe this to be the case.

Educating is a long term business and it needs to stay that way, but my concern was raised by another panelist on Q&A "that teaching and learning in Australia is losing it moral and ethical grounding and that is something that as a Aussie I have been proud of."

Wow, this hit me hard! The question I was left with was, do I create less relationship in my classroom now than I did before this big push on a Technology?

I got to thinking about what the "hidden curriculum" of technology was in education?

Speed? Product sales? Consumerism? Communication?

Answers were hard to find, so I did what I like to do these days and turned to some of my Twitter friends for a discussion. @edutweetoz was the place and space for this discussion to take place and many opinions were shared between 6.30am and 7.30am

The outcome was simple as it does always tend to be! Teachers and students learn best and in the most equitable fashion when learning is collaborative. But this collaboration brings about a sharing a of "ways of doing" which is critical to both the learner and the teacher within the interaction! This includes what ever technology is used throughout the interaction! However if we only use one form of technology this could and does effect the way in which communication and therefore relationships are formed!

The take away for me out of this is that schools and educational institutions need to use and be able to use all devices & soft wares so as not to holt or negatively effect the human interaction of learning!