A character endearing classic western was the Chapman, who moved into his cart a host gender-like Chinese stores but street-version to fill the pioneers stocked out. Among them, a peculiar group was made up of charlatans who offered universal remedies, usually a miraculous elixir brought from the Far East, which was not refused any medical condition, discomfort or inconvenience, of gastritis with alopecia. In this case, the condition of street came forced by the need to exit legs of each population, either because the miracle was expected, either because the results were not exactly advertised.
With ICT is the same. Upload a charlatan huckster the floor of Congress and offer the cure-all remedy for the ills of education. And buy it without question make no proof! The ICT elixir obnubila politicians .. and many teachers. Matter little experimental reports that demonstrate the dubious effectiveness of the remedy, at least if applied shortage criteria. No one objected to the CrecePelo miraculous.
the politicians fall given before the computer does not surprise me. In a serious state of education, is infinitely greater media impact of cramming classrooms with computers that incorporate support teachers. In the final analysis, the effects are only seen in the long term, beyond the electoral horizon. What I find hard to accept is the rapture of the teachers before the speech ICT trickster. Do not you remember that great educational innovations have to do with reflection and action, but not technology? Do not you see that countries that excel in international events are less technological equipment that our most backward regions? Why, then, applaud the charlatan rather than throw tomatoes or out of the stage to Gorraz?
If we have learned is that we are in an environment of vast diversity, where each student from a different position, with its own organizers and preconceptions, their own interests and their own patterns and rhythms of learning. Therefore, the "one size fits all" does not work, call lecture, manual or minipecé encyclopedic. To a diverse environment must be to welcome the computer as a powerful resource to enrich, never to replace, the list of available resources. I have come to see the materials stored in boxes in a science lab, relatively modern and well stocked, to make room for a new computer room, and this is a disgrace for learning. Can you learn mechanics with a virtual laboratory? No doubt, but is this the way to achieve a better learning experience? Who put in the hands of a surgeon, knowing that all their clinical training already done by a computer?
Educators seduced by the discourse of charlatan easy as pie exploit the argument that the computer has conquered all areas of society, while the classrooms are basically stuck in a transmissive model, outdated and inefficient. "If everybody uses the computer, how is it that is not in school?". This is a wrong and harmful speech, which explains the large investments failed. The question is "what should we change the current educational model to better serve the growing diversity" and "how ICTs can bring in this new model."
is naive to think that technology itself is going to cause major changes in the classroom. Al contrary, experience shows that by becoming a mere substitute for other resources such as the textbook, without a deep reflection on the organization of the groups, spaces and school days, further strengthens what has already been doing and not contributes to innovation and educational improvement.
The sale of snake oil elixir is easy, because it saves us the complex decision among numerous other resources available, and low risk for the charlatan, because the results will come in the long term. So when a report analyzing the results seriously, as has happened recently with the devastating analysis after eight years of implementation of ICT in the Landes , the charlatan and will be away or be taken another distraction from his wagon.
