It's been many years since I have posted anything on here. It seems that e-learning simply gets interpreted as those training courses you do online nowadays. Everything in the classroom or involving teaching at schools and other institutions automatically includes using information technology in all its forms and there's little need to have any separate advice on what equipment to use and where to find it.
I am still annoyed at how many places insist on providing expensive Apple devices but there is a heartening number still promoting Chromebooks and sticking to the Android route so the battles continue as, I guess, they ever will.
The big difference now is the use of AI, not just by students in creating essays or that's simply what is the default response to a web enquiry, by by teachers and, indeed, everyone I meet. I am quite surprised, at first, by how readily everyone takes the AI results as gospel but then I think about this a little more and realise that, before the AI results, I tended to believe whatever Google told me when seeking advice on something. I think that was because it wasn't 'Google' telling me but whoever had authored the particular text being referred to on a website. That gave me some degree of faith, or lack of it, when you could see who was writing whatever it was. Some authors and sites you learned to trust. Others you treated with more than a little caution. AI's responses, however, just hit you and have a certain take it or leave it quality which can be disconcerting, especially when I am pretty sure they're wrong. Nevertheless the ability of AI to conjure up a story, image, video or a whole website, summarise a whole book in minutes is stunning and, I have to admit, ruddy useful.
I did ask AI to create of website for one of my businesses, Corgi Toys. It's first creation was a fascinating site promoting toys for corgi dogs! Wonderfully clever with all sorts of straplines, interesting and memorable phrases and attractive options for themes and logos etc. The fact that my Corgi Toys business is all about die-cast model cars and trucks from the 1956 to 1970s era meant that wasn't quite what I wanted but I had to smile at AI's first efforts.
I am now reading how almost everyone in teaching and politics wants to ban smartphones at school, with talk of special metal bags, locked spaces and all sorts of other rather restrictive methods to be adopted to prevent a student from utilising what I recall as being promoted as a tremendously useful learning tool when I was last here.
Nowadays, a smartphone is often the only way that people view the web, to the extent that we have all had to find ways to make websites look right on those thin vertical screens as well as those ancient people still viewing sites on landscape monitors. OK, that was a bit extreme and, of course, the laptops are everywhere at schools and colleges and there will, no doubt, remain rooms full of PCs, monitors and keyboards too. As far as I can tell, it is not the smartphone itself that is causing so much dismay and grinding of teeth amongst anyone over 20 but what the kids are using them for. So what's new? Since the dawn of being able to find naughty pictures or football matches or games of all sorts on computers, students have been sneakily going to places they shouldn't in classrooms, lectures or offices. They were just as able to send messages and pictures of this and that, usually that. I admit that videos are much simpler with a smartphone so, yes, there are a lot more of them floating around and AI makes all of this either more amusing or more appalling or both.
Basically, now that just about every student or employee has a smartphone the teachers and bosses want them to stop using them while at work or study. So why not just tell them that? If that's the rule then that's what children, or adults too, for that matter, need to obey. Staff, teachers, managers at all the places concerned just need to have some authority and expect that when they ask someone to do or not to do something then they'll have a reasonable chance of success. We do not need some new set of quasi legal instructions from the Department of Education to enforce this. We just need better teachers, managers and adults generally. And parents who bring up children to respect teachers and managers and what they're told.
I happen to believe that in many instances there is a lot of sense in using the amazing resources available on a smartphone in learning or completing tasks in an office. Yes, of course, it will be tempting to check mail, messages and whichever app is popular at the time and this has to be discouraged. I wouldn't ban a student from looking at a message if their work was progressing well. Where I do draw the line is in offensive material being shared, others being disturbed, by phone noises or vibration or the content itself and the general disruption that letting people be free to do as they please can create. And my students would know about the various lines. Cross them and they're out with whatever punishment one is allowed to inflict these days. Certainly something can be thought up which both complies with HR wokeness and serves as suitable deterrent to messing with my rules. Yes, take away the device! Of course, that's the obvious one. But leave those using theirs responsibly to get on with whatever they're doing. Reward respect. Treating everyone as some sort of purveyor of porn or bad egg in one way or another is simply not right. It may be convenient and teachers may think it provides a route to an easier life in the classroom if the whole school bans the damn things but it merely displays how little we trust teachers and managers now to have any control over those they are supposed to guide and direct.
What are we showing these people by way of how to behave? Assume they are all delinquent and incapable of listening to advice, warnings or obeying rules. Treat everyone as if they are the lowest common denominator of common misbehaviour or downright criminality. No, I fear for where this leads. If a teacher cannot control the use of a device n a classroom for 45 minutes then they need to be retrained. Or sacked.
