George Lucas Talks Tech in the Classroom

Education has always been important to filmmaker George Lucas, as is obvious with Edutopia, a magazine and Web site published by The George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization that encourages the merge of education and technology.

At Salesforce.com’s annual user conference — Dreamforce — Lucas said in his keynote speech that resources are short at many public schools and often times teachers are perplexed with how to properly utilize the computers that companies donate.

cNet News reports:

Edutopia‘s focus is to help instructors learn how to organize a class, using technology to enhance the experience. Google Earth, for example, could be used to teach geography to students, Lucas said.”Don’t use the computers to teach Word Perfect…use them as a tool, like a pencil, to help the educational process,” Lucas said. He cited an example of having students build an airplane using a computer program, which, in turn, draws on their math skills.

“They learn math because they have to, if they want to build the plane,” Lucas said. “At some point, every kid will turn to their parent or teacher and ask them, ‘Why do I have to learn this? Why is it relevant to me?'”