Tech makes student/teacher collaboration more work-like

Technology has the potential to change the way teachers interact with students making the collaboration more like that found in the workplace.

So claims Tristan Wilkinson, Intel's head of public sector for Europe the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), speaking to IT PRO to mark the launch of the firm's latest Classmate PC.

"It changes the dynamic between teacher to student," he said. "It moves a teacher from being a knowledge expert, where they stand in front of a class and they share their experience, their knowledge, with the students who are absorbing the knowledge, when you put technology into that, the teacher becomes more of a facilitator."

"It's more collaborative. And that's sort of what we want in a workplace," he explained. "It means the teacher has to adapt."

While teachers sometimes have a reputation of not liking change, Wilkinson said Intel sees the exact opposite in schools. "Teachers who aren't comfortable with technology, they just have a natural fear it just makes them nervous," he admitted, but added that they see the possibilities technology offers.

"Some of them, possibly older ones who are necessarily as familiar as younger generation coming through, just because they haven't had the opporutnity, once they start using it, they quickly become advocates of that," he said.