Before I gripe, just a little news. Son of Class Blogmeister went up yesterday to mostly favorable response. There were a number of glitches initially, which I knew there would be, but everything that has been encountered has been fixed now, between the hours of 4:00 AM and the present (11:04 AM).
Programming is an interesting thing. It’s like building, engineering, art, writing… it’s like a lot of things. But really, it’s about building an experience for other people, something for them to do, a place to go to, a way to solve some problem. It is an extraordinarily gratifying endeavor, that could not have been imagined during my schooling years. I’m sure there’s a message there, but I’m leaving it alone for now.
Why a season of discontent? I just listened to a podcast by Bud Hunt, Podcast: In a Hurry. He brought together something that had sorta blown over my head, a general thread of conversation among the educator blogorati. People are voicing a growing discontent with the status quo of the education industry, it’s resistance to change, and our increasing unhappiness with being a part of an institution that seems more interested in maintaining its own comfort than doing its job — preparing children for their future.
Dedication to the mission is still with us. If anything it is stronger. It is the heart of our discontent. We live in an incredibly creative time with opportunities whose realization depends on our imaginations more than any other skill or character trait. Yet, we work for an institution that remains grounded in industrial age notions of itself, and we don’t like it.
Bud mentioned postings by Will Richardson, Steve Dembo, and Stephen Downes, as well as my recent podcast about classrooms in 2015. Certainly the best reference to our growing frustration is the New Year announcement from John Pederson, Quit your Day Job 101. He did it. He quit his job as a district director of technology and is going to have a go at making a living without a job. I can only imagine the courage that this came from. For me, it was my wife. It didn’t even occur to me to quit, until she suggested the idea.
I wish John all the luck, and know that we will continue to be in touch, as I will certainly be paying more attention to his blog. Perhaps it is in becoming small pieces loosely joined that we will best affect change. One thing that I do know, is that the conversation that has grown through the read/write web is different from anything before, and it is through this new avenue of expression that our discontent is becoming clarified and hopefully the solutions will be crafted and irresistibly presented.
Until then!
Thanks David! The courage came from both the family and those around me in the edublogosphere. It’s crazy, it’s nuts, but it’s refreshing. You beat me to Bud’s podcast…it’s scheduled for my afternoon walk. I look forward to it.
I enjoy the redesign over here! Looking good!
I have a pesonal story from being at my daugther’s high school yesterday that will further fuel the feeling of discontent. I was there to talk with them about using a computer program with my daughter to help her with math/algebra.
They wanted to see the program that I have been using at home with her over the last two months. I requested that they have a projector for my laptop. I also emailed into the teacher group the night before some documents for them to review prior to the meeting.
When I got to the meeting, they had an old OVERHEAD projector in the room for me to use. They had no clue about making presentations off a computer. Also the school’s email system had been down and they never got the documents. It is an outrage. None of this would fly in the “commercial” world. In fact, you’d be out of business given the competition for resources.
If I could do it, I would pull my daugther and home school her. Clearly her school system is not any shape to deal with technology and the future. I suspect this is the case in many of our schools.
Enough ranting for the day.
Jay Bryant
http://www.jaybryant.com
It seems like Jay’s comment about home schooling is becoming a refrain, and I wonder how many more middle class families might pull that off in the near future.
In that light, I wonder if there might be more “hybrids” in the future. The brick and mortar schools could provide the best “face to face” interactions for approximately half of the day (or less), and home technology could fufill the best possible online learning and research.
There was a recent article about this premise, with the idea of “car schooling.” Students would move around the city to classroom learning experiences that supplemented their online and home schooling. Maybe schools will become more like boutiques, offering the best learning experiences for a certain subject or area instead of trying to cover all the bases.
Quitting your day job in institutionalised_education is a liberating and exhilarating experience.
I taught for a while in an alternative school where kids could vote with their feet in terms of the relevance and utility of the learning provided. In a way it as boutique learning. I’ve never forgotten it. There was no captive audience. It is an interesting thought experiment to ask teachers to reflect upon what might happen if their students were customers/clients in the real sense of the word. Perhaps then we might see the introduction of relevant and appropriate pedagogies (ICT enabled or not) in education. I have also raised a few kids and watched the good, the bad and the ugly of their “learning through school” .
Both experiences mean that I’ve learned stuff about my kids, my students, myself and teaching and learning that make me curious about, and hungry for improvement/change in how we socialise, enculturate and liberate our young through education.
Hello All,
First, I want to thank Dave for providing my school with Blogmeister. Our 3rd grade teachers and their students will be coming on board over the next few weeks. As I read the post and comments, I feel as though I’m living my life in reverse. After teaching for a short year and a half, I returned to school got my masters in library science — became a computer consultant, got my MBA — worked for 29 years, loving every minute of it. Then, in September of 2004 I made the decision to return to public education. I must be one fortunate individual — I have been allowed to use all of my skills to put together a library media center that … is light-years from the room I walked into just a little over a year ago. I will include two links here that will give you a flavor .. http://www.grandviewlibrary.org. I have also written and received grants to update technology in the building. Over the summer I automated the library on my own time — we were up and running without paper in September. The program is now considered a model program. Within the past few months, my work has been cited twice in School Library Journal. http://www.grandviewlibrary.org/PDFS/SchoolLibraryJournalArticle.pdf and http://www.grandviewlibrary.org/PDFS/SLJNov2005.pdf.
The following link gives you a flavor for the program: http://www.grandviewlibrary.org/TeacherPresentation_2005/PresentationInspiration2005.htm I prepared this visual as I was asked to speak at the spring meeting of the School Library Media Specialists of Southeastern New York.
I would not want to be a district technology coordinator — I am only as happy as I am because I am able to use technology to change the way children learn and work. Using web based graphic organizers which I programmed, 2nd and 3rd grade students have continued to work on research projects over the holiday break. I am able to review their work and converse with them — this is not required work, they want to do it. To everyone out there — please come back — we are the ones who have to gently demonstrate the role technology can play — the kids don’t need convincing — they eat it up!