I had a lesson recently which kind of shocked me as it revealed that that teaching using blogs, podcasts, mp3's etc is going to be a lot harder than I had imagined. I asked one of my younger students if she had had the chance to see the interview we had done on her computer. She said that she hadn't as she didn't know how to move the file from the cd to the hard disk!!!
I have no reason to believe that she was lying as she is an intelligent and conscientious student. Yet my heart drops when I realise that even the smartest kids have not been taught even the most basic of computer skills in their regular schools.
To enter a classroom here is to travel back in time 50 years. With the exception of the presence of electricity and central heating there is nothing to distinguish a classroom now from one in the fifties. Bare walls painted institutional green, desks which should have gone out with the slide rule and bars on the windows are the dominant features of most classrooms.
Unfortunately, the "teaching" that often takes place in these places is as just as impoverished as the physical surroundings.
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