New Ideas Nine Years Ago

"21st Century skills" dominate the conversation at tech conferences, UStream presentations and edtech Twitter posts. The efficacy and need to 'transform' teaching and the use of technology to support the learning process as opposed to a final product are well stated.

Yet this has been around for a while. Browsing The Journal's website, I came across an article dated from January of 1999. The author, Jolene Dockstader, discusses how and why to use technology in class:

True integration comes when students learn through computers, not about them. There is no value of learning word processing unless it is used to further content comprehension.

The author goes on to comment on research done in 1996 on learning in context and the use of technology. It is a short article and obviously does not mention the current 2.0 technologies that are so in vogue.

Technology's relationship with content has been discussed and studies long before the current 'revolution'. Studies, leaders and teachers have known that technology can't exists outside of the parameters of the core content areas.

This is nothing new and the fact that we are still talking about it is disappointing. Our 2.0 conversation has been on-going for nearly a decade- and some of the answers aren't all that hard to figure out.