Well I assume that I will lose points for this particular Blog, but that is irony in itself. I watched the videos on the blog page and found myself getting more and more upset. Here once again I have catchy videos with sad looking children explaining to me how I am a horrible person for not doing whatever the author of the video thinks should be done. Why is it that teachers are vilified for not saving the world? It seems to me that some people think that if teachers do not devote every second of their waking lives to their students we are failing our communities and our students. I wonder why people do not protest doctors or businessmen playing golf instead of working 24/7?
On top of that frustration the ideas presented here are things that an average teacher has no control of. So we should be using Blogs, Wikis, Cell phones and other interactive tools in our classes? How long do they think that will last till we are fired? Or even if we are not fired right away you know as soon as someone says something sexual using one of these tools who do you think will get thrown to the wolves of lawsuits and scandal? These sort of tools will not be fully available until the looming giant of Liability is removed from the backs of schools. For example, my own school has recently purchased a piece of software called FCAT Explorer. This is a sequence on online lessons and quizzes designed to help our students prepare for the FCAT.As part of the software package it has an internal e-mail system. Teachers can e-mail students and students can e-mail teachers and each other. I was listening in to the in-service training for this and overheard talk on how the students e-mail will be turned off so that no inappropriate messages are passed. When they are turning off the only Web 2.0 feature in software they bought and own what makes people think that I will have any ability to drag my school into the collaborative age?
All these tech tools are cool but technology is not useful until it solves a problem. Sure we can use these tools to interact, share ideas, collaborate and create, but my question is what? If we are only going to use these tools to put a new coat of wax on decades old teaching methodologies then we are not solving any problems. Take this assignment for example. How is this any different forcing us to keep a journal of what we have learned in class because, “Everybody learns better when they write about it.” (I actually had a masters level education teacher tell me this before.)
Tell me when we are going to solve problems like removing slow to publish and expensive textbooks from school and use creative commons licensed material that can exist online and in print. Wait that is already happening… but we can’t use it in our schools more then likely.
Or better yet if these tools are so good and kids are being held back by their backwater old-fashioned teachers then why are we not scraping everything and teaching our children only with well-crafted toys like in “Mimzy were the Borogoves.” I mean if they are all ready to take their future and this much information is out there then why do they even need schools?
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html
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