Ooh he's angry - let's smash the tablets

I dropped off my wife at the hairdresser and went for a walk around the block. The village of Tarxien was preparing for the feast of the Annunciation. The street I was in had a statue at every corner and my initial thought was to do a collage with four of the statues. BUT then I met Moses which is where the story starts. What follows is a highly compressed storyline of my last years as director of the digital literacy department.
It was the election campaign of 2013 and I was delivering a lecture to teachers during their inservice training about new technologies when we heard the news that the two major political parties were promising a tablet for each child. Election won and we started a lengthy process of procurring the tablets and what was more important to me, teacher training. We started off with a pilot study from which we learned a lot about teachers' needs and worries. Training was intensive and few things were left to chance. I had a splendid team at the time and they did a great job considering all limitations and the resistance by some. Three years on and the first tablets were distributed. The first year passed and evaluation started. This is where Moses' face was modelled on mine! In spite of the successes that were registered I still met a few schools who were absolutely against the use of tablets by their students! Others used the tablets without a thought to a change in strategy or pedagogy. When reflecting over all the efforts and work that was put into training, preparations, writing a national digital literacy strategy with all the envisaged changes in the way we should be educating the child of the 21st century and the resistance by some educators both at class and school level and a small lobby of parents who were afraid of the radiation of networks in schools, one gets a teeny bit disheartened. In spite of the resistance my department continued to help and encourage change. A year later the pandemic struck and schools were forced to go online. I had retired by then and my blood pressure went down to normal again.

[Judith Johnson]

Great clarity!

[Susan Wakely]

Change is so difficult for some and interesting correlation between Moses and the trials of your job. Depicted nicely in this capture.

[Kathy]

The sculpture and the story really do dovetail. Nice close up.

[Renee Salamon]

I read what you had to say with real interest - thank you. Sad it took a pandemic to sort some out. As for Moses, the similarities are clear. Great pic btw