pedagogy or technology: the digital divide

hmmmm. having convinced myself that i'd try to be ever so slightly less predictably cynical/grumpy than usual, today didn't get off to the best start. well, actually, the start was ok - there was no-one at the registration desk so i helped myself to a name tag, ticked off my name, took some pencils, and went for a stroll around the near deserted exhibition hall (more pens, pencils and danish pastries, and an interesting chat with someone from intute). i then waved at stuart, had a quick chat with helen lyons and, with a spring in my step, set off for a 'pedagogy or technology' strand session with 4 presentations, the first 2 of which were about the digital divide.
the first one was intriguingly entitled "the digital divide: is it in the hyphen?". imagine my delight when it started off by offering some definitions of e-learning. they'd done some research (as part of their benchmarking efforts, though the presenter was keen to point out that they'd received no funding for this activity; the joys of the funded pathfinder project were to be revealed in the next presentation) into barriers of engagement. apparently, some people see e-learning as:

e-learning

where as some people see it as:

e-learning.

do you see what they did there? in case you missed the subtlety, some people focus on the technology, some people focus on the learning. among the revelations that the presenter went on to share were the following: "we think the 'e' should stand for 'effective' or 'enhanced'" and "we had an e-learning strategy - i wrote one because hefce had one, so i thought we'd better - but no-one ever read it. so we scrapped it and included it in the learning and teaching strategy". one of the attendees nodded vigorously and agreed that all institutions should have a learning strategy.

at this point, the woman sat next to me threw her cup of water all over me and the floor. [yes, yes, i know, retribution for the infamous chocolate milk incident of 2006.] the water flinging signalled the start of the next session, which reported on the funded pathfinder project.

this session focussed on whether there was such a thing as subject-specific staff development. admittedly, i got a bit lost with the point that was being made - they took some existing staff development materials, and re-branded them as subject-specific/tailored, then interviewed 6 members of staff who had been through the "subject-specific" development to see whether it had been effective or not. in some ways it had been effective - but in others it hadn't, and the presenter made the bold statement that "different subjects want technology for different things". erm...

things did start to look up slightly in the final 2 presentations, though...