Seems to me I've heard that line before.
Today it's an online encyclopedia, yesterday it was a personal web site. There's always somebody who's sure that he or she knows what pupils need in the educational system. A number of years ago, at a previous conference of this sort, one group led a session on teaching pupils to build their own personal web sites. I'm certainly not against these sites, but I found it hard to believe that a presentation of this sort belonged in a "professional" conference. After all, all the presenters were "selling" us was the use of a particular version of Netscape Navigator that included a graphic HTML editor (which worked well in English, and not at all in Hebrew). They devoted their session to showing us how easy it was to build a simple site - something that the attendees could certainly have figured out by themselves - and no time at all to explaining why they thought each pupil should have a site, what he or she might do with one, what sort of influence such a site might have on his or her studies, or anything else. They couldn't even tell us why someone would want to view any of the thousands of new sites they were suggesting pupils be encouraged to build.
What this presentation, and the presentation on the encyclopedia, and undoubtedly numerous future presentations, had in common, was that they offered a technological development as an end in itself. No attempt was made to connect the technology to how it might actually be used within an educational setting, or even to ask what sort of educational goals it might achieve.
Go to: New kid on the block, or
Go to: They come in all shapes and sizes, or
Go to: Too Common Knowledge.