Film 2: Bridging our Future

Unlike the first film technology is presented much more as an enabler. In the first instance technology is used to present theory and to search for examples of bridges. It is also used to test students knowledge, to allow them to model a bridge and give the students access to an engineer for expert advice. Thankfully the children then get hands on by building a model of bride that they then test out. It is probably fair to say that the technology has been appropriately aligned with desired learning outcomes. Technology does not so much distance students from the world as enable to understand aspects of the world i.e. how to build a bridge.

The technology is used as a means of communication but the teacher and the engineer seem much more integrated into the process. Unlike the first film there is no sense that they might be superfluous to the process. Rather they are facilitating the process through the use of technology. Whether real or imagined, there is a also a sense that children are communicating much more readily with one another around the technologies that they are using. For example they chat with one another about what they are viewing on their screens. There is some automated communication from the devices e.g. the students are presented with their scores when they have completed the quiz. On one line of argument this frees up the teacher to provide expert input into the more important classroom processes.

The film is clearly portraying a Utopian vision of a technology enabled future. That said, there is something reasonably "realistic" about this vision in that the film presents a vision of technology as integrated into classroom practices and enabling "real" learning. It is more difficult to make the case for technology as removing the school children from reality although one might note that they do actually visit any bridges. Everything is at their finger tips. The fact that everyone is so picture perfect probably speaks to the potentially dystopian nature of this vision as it will be a certain class of citizen that has access to this kind of technology in the classroom.