I’m not a huge Blogvangelist. It’s one of many tools out there, all of which I recognize as being in flux. It didn’t exist as an important part of my world two years ago, and perhaps will fade out in the next two years. I’ve been around long enough to accept that fads come and go, and that it takes nothing from their value to recognize this.
But blogging makes such a great and simple lens through which to witness and interact with the new information environment. In the old environment, you typed your knowledge and ideas on paper, or scratched it with a pencil. Then you carried it to its destination. You read books that you walked or road to obtain and that others walked or road to deliver. You drove to the theater, bought CDs (Albums in my world) at the store you walked to, consumed information that somebody handed to you.
It was a foot and mouth information environment, and our information economy road on wheels.
Our children have sprouted wings, and most of us don’t even see them. Mark Ahlness blogged a story yesterday about his classroom, where school technicians were working on the LAN, resulting in the students’ network folders being inaccessible. They had access to the Internet, though. One Student needed to print something, but did not have access from her computer to the printer in the corner of the room. Mark continues…
She was typing in Word – wanted to print, but could not – and could not save to her network folder. But she had Internet access. There was only one computer in the room that had access to our printer at that time. She turned to me and said, “Couldn’t I just copy and paste this to my blog – like not ask for it to be published or anything? Just save it there…. and then I could go to that other computer that can print, log on to my blog, open that saved article, copy and paste my writing from my blog article into Word – and then print? Like, would that work?”
“Like, my goodness,” Mark says. He has butterflies in his classroom (3rd grader butterflies), and Mark sees the wings, and he rests in awe that these kids are learning, practically by themselves, that they have wings.
It’s going to happen. But will it happen with our guidance, or without? Will it happen to a generation of children, or to a select few and privileged? Will our future be one that matches the times, or one that frustratingly looks longingly back to better times, because those are the times we prepared our children for?
Got to get thing together. Flying to Utah today.
The word “guidance” strikes me as being really important here David – the “guide on the side role” to steal from Knowles in Adult Education. And there is something else I’m really concerned about as I read your post sitting here in the coffee shop at my university in Hong Kong, at the end of a long day (it’s nearly 7.30pm) .. what’s that concern?
As well as K-12, we are not preparing university students for the complex world thye are in and will enter professionally in a very short time. It’s not just 21st century info-lit skills. It’s that we still basically offer, what I consider to be, narrowly focused degrees. I believe that what out world crucially needs is graduates with multi-disciplinary degrees to deal with the problems out there. How do we get there? I don’t have an answer right now but I am struck by how our specialization in/with education .. the adoption of ‘Fordism’ by education, particular higher education … is still firmly entrenched in the early 20th century. Education seems to be so out-of-step with where it needs to be right now if our planet and our people are to survive. We need to find a way through this internationally – something that seems to fly past the Bush administration and others internationally including here in Hong Kong.
There is movement in the direction each of you ask for, but change is slow. There are numerous organizations and web sites dedicated to providing tools for teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms, but teachers need to be trained, and this takes time. Most universities, if not all, are planning updates to technology and technology use policies that will modernize their campuses and curricula, but this all goes through committee, need I say more. I also share your concerns. The challenge is to insure that these changes are made available to all students. We need to make sure that teacher training penetrates urban areas and that school administrators are included in this training.
Educators and those who train them need to “see the light,” agreed.
What I find interesting is the mental model the student had of the network. The LAN is a place to store and find info. The Net is a place to store and find info. Same thing.
btw, check out the excellent presentation at Educause on The Myth of Network Neutrality by Scott Bradner.