by 
In March I had the great honor of being the keynote speaker at the 3rd ICTQatar ICT in Education national conference in Doha, Qatar. That was my 3rd trip to Qatar over the past couple of years.
Following my keynote, a nice young gentleman asked if he could interview me. I was happy to oblige and we found a vacant lounge area on the college campus where the conference was being held. That’s when the hijinx began.
First of all, the interviewer didn’t have a tripod. I convinced him that going handheld was a bad idea and helped him prop the camera on top of a camera bag. Then midway through the interview, one of his colleagues inexplicably walked into the lounge, headed to the light switches and cut our lights. After we objected, the guy spent a few minutes trying to turn the lights back on. After failing to do so, he shrugged and said, “Go somewhere else.” Eventually, the lights were turned on and a tripod emerged.
| Subscribe to My Free Newsletter! |
Despite these technical difficulties, I believe that the interview came out quite nicely and I was able to explore some issues in-depth. You might think of it as my “UnTED Talk.”
If you have 42 spare minutes, you might wish to watch this video. Pleae not be put-off my the incredibly unattractive poster image displayed in the static video player below.
Many thanks to ICTQatar for the terrific job of putting the video on YouTube.
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.
One of the risks associated with sharing unedited video of a conversation online is that you will be hald to account for every utterance in a freewheeling conversation.
Will Richardson just asked me the following via Twitter:
Nice vid. But laptops make kids dress better? Just the box? Isn’t there some larger culture piece involved?
To which I responded:
I think I was referring to the adults.
When teachers and preservice teachers received laptops (along with their students) it DOES/DID change aspects of their self-concept. Such a that change in self-concept included dress, further education, remaining in the job, seeking promotion, etc… This has been my experience in higher education and in K-12 laptop schools.
The laptop was not the key factor, but emblematic of a renewed commitment to innovation & high expectations. Professional develop, often in unpredictable ways when they are expected to do so and support exists.