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Are you only teaching the kids how to drill holes?
By Terry Freedman
Thu, 28 May 2009, 06:32

Drilling holes? What’s that got to do with ICT? Possibly quite a bit….

You can always rely on Niel McLean of Becta to come up with a fresh insight, and his talk at the Naace 2009 Conference proved to be no exception. I can’t recall the exact details of the story, but Niel related a conversation which took place at a parents’ open day:

Parent: What’s this machine for?

Design & Technology Teacher: It’s for drilling holes.

Parent: So why would you want to use it?

Teacher: To drill holes.

Parent: Yes, but why teach the kids how to use it?

Teacher: So they can drill holes.

People don’t always express themselves very well, and this is a case in point. What the parent was really asking was: Why would anyone want to drill holes?

The issue is, how far do we fall into the same trap?

Q: Why use SlideShare?

A: To create slides.

Q: Why use Audacity?

A: So we can edit a podcast.

Q: Why use a spreadsheet?

A: So we can do calculations.

We need to make sure that we have a rather better set of answers!

This is #16 in a series of 25 reflections on the Naace 2009 Conference.

© Terry Freedman Thu, 28 May 2009