Councils vote online - will teachers teach online?
25/09/08 15:22
A recent news story talked about a new proposal where councillors may be able to vote by phone or video call. Some in the article labelled councillors as ‘lazy’. But surely we can celebrate this as an example of technology helping people to participate.
Usually if you can’t attend in person you can vote by proxy, and this has been widely accepted. Yet when talking about voting via the phone or video conference it is considered somehow undemocratic. Granted there is the possibility that it may get abused, but encouraging participation should be the key argument rather than talking about bad behaviour.
Imagine - in the future we might all be able to vote using technology, so if we can’t make it to the ballot box we can vote for the next prime minister via text for example. Anything is possible. We should embrace technology as a way to increase participation and deal with the problems of human behaviour as they emerge.
Food for thought anyway. What are the implications for teachers in the class room? In twenty years, will we be doing more teaching on-line via video conferencing?
Usually if you can’t attend in person you can vote by proxy, and this has been widely accepted. Yet when talking about voting via the phone or video conference it is considered somehow undemocratic. Granted there is the possibility that it may get abused, but encouraging participation should be the key argument rather than talking about bad behaviour.
Imagine - in the future we might all be able to vote using technology, so if we can’t make it to the ballot box we can vote for the next prime minister via text for example. Anything is possible. We should embrace technology as a way to increase participation and deal with the problems of human behaviour as they emerge.
Food for thought anyway. What are the implications for teachers in the class room? In twenty years, will we be doing more teaching on-line via video conferencing?
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