Technology Pyramid

We are all familiar with the "food Pyramid" where the foods that are the best for you are at the bottom, (the ones we should eat the most of) and the ones that are the not-so-good are at the very top (we are supposed to eat the least amount of these).

So what if we took the idea of the food pyramid and transferred it to educational technology? What would you put at the bottom of the pyramid and what would you put at the top, and what would fill in the middle?

I am writing an article and would like to hear your fedback so that I could incorporate it into the article...

Thanks for the help

Tags: Holt, Tim, ed, importance, of, tech, technology

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Robitaille on May 26, 2008 at 6:22am

Wow, what a great topic. You've got me thinking. In my opinion, the most important skill to have is not actually a technical skill but one that you need in order to use technology proficiently: resilience. I would put resilience at the top of the pyramid. Resilience can be molded by educators who teach transferrable skills across software packages and platforms. Creating an environment where students are met with problems they need to solve by building upon prior knowledge is a productive way to encourage resilience.

Ethics, cybersafety and netiquette are also extremely important and should live near the top of the pyramid. Below that would be information literacy skills, including resourcefulness and the effective uses of search engines. Technical skills in word processing, keyboarding, page design, file management, basic multimedia skills and general computer operation would probably follow. At the bottom of the list would be skills in programming as well as computer hardware setup. I personally do not feel that it is important for everyone to be able to assemble a computer or program it to work. I am more focused on the creative uses of the computer.

If I came back to this list in a couple of days, I would probably rearrange it and add other things, but it is a stream of consciousness response to your topic. I hope it helps. Good luck.