There has been a great deal of discussion on the listservs lately about our communities’ fearfulness concerning blogs and wikis, mostly pointing to the behaviors of youngsters on their xanga and myspace accounts. I must confess that I haven’t looked. If I did, I’m sure I would be shocked — but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Xanga.com and myspace.com are evidence of the wild world that we have allowed to happen, because we are too frightened to take hold of new technologies and too unwilling to pay for sufficient access, professional development, teacher reflection time, risk-taking innovation, and thoughtful harnessing and integration of these technologies into our curriculum.
The one thing that is constant in this world to day is that it is changing. When my son started school, he used an Apple II computer. Today, as a high school senior, he’s producing his own videos, and distributing them to friends over the Internet. It’s not just technology. The very nature of information has changed. Yet teachers have no more time to reflect on these changes, master new skills, harness new opportunities, and protect children from new dangers, than my teachers had in the 1950s and ’60s. We haven’t been doing our jobs. We haven’t been allowed. We haven’t been pushed.
The technologies are here, we’ve simply turned it over to kids to make of it what they will. What should we expect?
It seems many in education have become complacent in looking out to the world to see with critical eyes what children are moving toward. It seems that for a very long time now educational admin and policy makers have been locked in an ivory tower with the belief that a books worth of good knowledge is all that a student needs to ready themselves against the world. Unfortunately all that means is that there is some metric that can be used to compare students in different areas (Canada vs US, Europe et al). True we are a global community and our engineers need to compete with their engineers, but they also have to go home at night and deal with life, and for a good portion of their education, hormones.
We are using wikispaces to learn about Web 2.0 — (check out westwood.wikispaces.com) and my students and I are both loving it. The history allows me to see in detail who is posting meaningful edits and who is just goofing off. They can ask me questions.
The whole nature of education in my computer science classroom has changed. I’m so impressed. These students are learning, exploring, and discussing in an engaged way like I’ve never seen before. It speaks their language.
I think that composition, history — so many subjects can be transformed by the use of this technology.
I do block myspace from being accessed at our school. There are great uses of this technology however and I’ve fallen in love with wikispaces. I truly believe such collaboration will be the future of education both at the secondary and college leve. It is a perfect compliment to team projects. Students can work from home — it takes away the excuse from the “Non type A” who doesn’t take the project home. I’m finding that type tends to post more than the “Type A” does.
Thank you Dave for introducing me to these technologies. I attended three of your workshops at GAETC — I’ll never be the same. I feel rejuvinated.