e-wot?

CET chair Prof Phillip Wong kicked off the conference with a nice analogy, comparing technology with antibiotics. Cavemen are given antibiotics and told the little pills will save their lives. Some of these cavemen will put the pills on a pedestal and worship them, others will try one pill and leave the rest, others will mix the pills with water and rub the mixture all over their bodies, and others will take the whole lot in one go. If the pills don’t work they’ll dismiss the claim that they’ll save their lives. If the pills make them sick they’ll say they’re dangerous. The challenge is to help them understand how and when to use the pills. The same is true for technology. Prof Wong said he’d borrowed that analogy from Chris Dede (see below).

RAdm Ronnie Tay the new CEO of IDA gave us some interesting figures about IT use in Singapore, focusing on IT use among the digitally literate and those in education. Up-to-date stuff with a clear vision.

Chris Dede talked about more of the same adding some nice video clips one, an ad for Microsoft spoofing ‘the Devil wears Prada’ was a nice vignette of how technology is used in a crisis. The message he was making was simply that teachers/educationalists need to be helped to develop skills to use the technologies their learners are using. Pedagogical, not technological in approach. He said that he prefered the lectern to the laptop he was using. And, once again, another person saying that mobile technologies will rule soon (if not already).

Here’s the MS video he showed:

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I had to leave the conference for a meeting at this point. Back tomorrow for the full day tho’. Looking forward to seeing the stuff on gaming.