Leading Technology Integration: Expertise vs. Amateurship and Easy Options

🧏‍♀️LET THIS SINK IN: Unless #AI strategic decision-making and professional development are led and facilitated by those truly qualified in #DigitalPedagogy, technology will never be integrated the way it should be. And what is worse we- educators and students alike, and ultimately humanity- will not be adequately prepared to navigate this tech-infused changing world!

We’ve been stuck in this cycle for years. This is why the discourse around the integration of #TechnologyInEducation misses the point, and why the large majority of teachers are not equipped with the necessary critical #DigitalSkills and capacity to implement the principles of Digital Pedagogy to harness the benefits of technology for meaningful learning and develop relevant #skills among their students.

❗️The outcome of this reality is simple: Technology is innovated by the minute. Pedagogy is not.

For a real shift to happen, two things must change:

👩‍🎓1. VALUING EXPERTISE: Experts must be sought after and valued beyond words. I remember the response I once got in Hebrew "You are doing Shlihut!" to my expectation to be paid after more than a year's work! Passion for a "mission" is not a substitute for a paycheck. True acknowledgement of an expert's value also involves proper remuneration for the specialized knowledge and years of experience they bring to the table.

🫵2. STRATEGIC APPOINTMENTS: Leaders of educational institutions (even those in Digital Pedagogy departments) must stop appointing experts from unrelated fields (e.g., Linguistics or History) or those in general management positions, to lead long-awaited and necessary transformational educational processes. Choosing the EASY OPTION to lead projects or facilitate workshops in the educational system (including Higher Ed) is evidence of lack of professional standards and vision. A love for tools or basic technical proficiency is no substitute for expertise in the specific field of Digital Pedagogy and specialized faculty development on this!

❗️Let’s once and for all take the field of Techno-pedagogy seriously!! Maybe then education will move forward, gearing up students with the literacies needed for a digital world. And maybe and hopefully we will have a chance to keep human beings at the center of this revolution.

❓I am curious: Do you see this failure to treat Techno-Pedagogy as a field of expertise and a tendency to appoint people who are not qualified for it to lead AI implementation in your context too?

🙏🙏Sorry for the rant, friends and colleagues. I just feel that we are at a point at which only a real shake-up will save us from the continuous decline of the educational system.

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