The 'success' of the web, the government's push to get everyone connected and ongoing funding cuts all put pressure on universities to employ technology to increase efficiency. Digital technology is often promoted as a panacea which fails only because not everyone 'learns how to use it properly'. It is clear how technology can continue to improve administrative processes but its use more directly in teaching and learning can be more difficult to evaluate?. Many want technology to be so intuitive that it seamlessly melds with their existing practice and 'disappears into use' while others see it as an opportunity to disrupt the status quo and forge new ways of working. Alongside this there is a fear that incoming students will expect certain web-like technologies to be integrated into their learning and that institutions will appear out-moded if they don't engage with the latest platforms. In this talk I will explore the disappear/disrupt continuum and the potential digital technology has to support teaching and learning beyond being a simple content delivery system. I will also discuss the Digital Visitors & Digital Residents principle which can be used as a tool to assess how students might react to certain forms of technology thereby avoiding the 'scatter-gun' approach to using new platforms.

1. Disappear or Disrupt? Lawrie Phipps

2. Acknowledgements Dave White, Dave Cormier And everyone I connect to on the web

3. Introduction Why technology?

4. Technology as a panacea?

8. 64% of you are involved in teaching and research (stats from HESA http://bit.ly/fzUsVU “all academic staff” “2009/10”)

10. Digital Natives Prensky, 2001 Student Expectations Wants and Needs

11. Role

12. Desire

13. Pedagogy

14. Pedagogy

15. Technology

16. Motivation

17. Visitors

18. Residents

20. ?

21. “You can visit Paris and see nothing” Seth Godin “idea tourism” “It's possible to do a drive-by of some of the big ideas of science or politics or technology and see only what you want to see. I don't think there's a lot of point in that. If you want to truly understand Darwin, then go to a lab and do some experiments. If you want to see how social networking will actually change the way ideas spread, go use it. Intensely, and with a purpose in mind.”

22. Positioning You Institution Teaching Research

23. Bibliography Dave White http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/author/whited/ Dave Cormier http://davecormier.com/ Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/03/idea-tourism.html