I periodically poke around for new signs of interest in the Nintendo Dsi among U.S. teachers. We know about the DS Classroom initiative in Japan, but apart from one or two pioneers we’ve heard from, there have been few signs that teachers are experimenting with the DS out there in the U.S. (if you are, we’d love to hear from you!).

What I did find today (at the lovely Ning network Classroom 2.0) was a handful of teachers in Australia who have gotten sets of iPod Touches. What is it about Australia that makes those teachers so often early adopters - the geography and the familiarity with distance learning maybe? Anyway, it was striking to me that these teachers were asking many of the same questions teachers asked 20 years ago about desktop computers - in a nutshell, “I’ve got this hardware, it seems great - any ideas about how I should use it?” Teachers did share pointers to reading and math practice games, a classroom management system, and so on - but no one seemed to have started from an instructional or curricular need, or even from a vision for organizing their classroom - instead, they’re starting from the hardware.

This should come as no surprise, I suppose, as it’s exactly what happened with desktop computers for classroom use. But it’s worrying. We know that many teachers are likely to be resistant to the idea of students using Nintendo machines in the classroom. We need to be sure we always lead with the instructional need we’re addressing - from a teacher perspective, the hardware should be incidental. What matters is whether the tool helps address a need that they recognize in their own students.