The Intuitive Holy Grail

Stephen O’Hear lists his feature set for the perfect weblogging software for education. Many of the features he wants are available as separate web services or software but they are not yet available ‘under one roof.’ Convergence is the process that seeks to connect these disparate elements together. His article in the Guardian, ‘Seconds out, round two’ gives a very readable overview of the so-called ‘web 2.o’ phase in the development of the internet, providing a framework to consider and make sense of our own use of the internet in schools.

From the comments to Stephen’s original post Ewan McIntosh thinks he may be in reach of the elusive holy grail as he is at Les Blogs 2.0 in Paris with most of the main blog vendors in the world taking to the stage as part of the Education Panel. That remains to be seen but he seems to be asking the right questions.

Ewan’s final comment in the above post jumps out at me.

‘Managers (teachers?) don’t mind problems they cannot solve but they hate solutions they don’t understand

It sums up for me the challenge that faces everyone involved in encouraging the use of technology in our schools. Those of us who are convinced by the delights of technology and continue to enjoy grappling with the implications of it worry more about the feature set of the Holy Grail. The ‘normal’ teacher, dedicated but buried by bureaucracy and proscription, needs solutions that can be understood and assimilated into practice seamlessly and effortlessly. I’m confronted with this everytime I step into schools with my ‘big ideas.’ The real Holy Grail is the service or software that has no learning curve with no consultant necessary