I enjoyed a great day yesterday here in Southeast Texas. TCEA’s region five folks put on a fabulous conference. The biggest complaint that I heard was about the sessions that people couldn’t attended, the hard decisions they had to make in what presentations to see, and which ones to leave behind.
The keynote on the new shape of information seemed to be well received. At least most of the audience stayed awake. The blogging session that followed was overwhelmingly attended. I am getting the sense that an overflow of interest in blogging as a school/classroom endeavor is about to be reached. People have a sense of what blogging is, and, consequently, are realizing its value as a communication and literacy tool. However, barriers remain:
- over filtered school networks
- lack of time to retool lessons to integrate classroom blogging
- media induced negative impressions about blogging in the public
- impending legislation that threatens to ban social networks from the classroom
- insufficient technical staff to support software installations and maintenance
- the overwhelming burdens of standardized tests
There is much work to be done — much conversation to be had.
Today, I’ll facilitate day 2 of the Southeast Texas Web 2.0 summit. The participants will include teams of educators from area schools, including librarians, administrators, teachers, and technology specialists. I hope to include a podcasted discussion in one of my upcoming Connect Learning podcasts.
Technorati Tags: area5tcea2006, warlick
David,
I’d love to know how you deal with the “over filtered school networks” issue.
Sheryl
Over filtered school networks could end up being the death of blogging in the classroom. Especially if you like to include photos on your blogs. It is time for the network administrators to realise that the technology is here, and that by effectively crippling its use in the classroom, we are preventing educators from encouraging good practice.
In a sense, we are re-running the arguments that no doubt flared up with the introduction of the Guttenberg and Caxton presses. The ruling elite (the aristocracy and the church) of the time did not want the masses to be literate as it would empower them and lead to the asking of too many pertinant questions… Nowadays, the network administrators have become the elite. They are happy to have us reliant on them because that keeps them in control… unfortunately, the tools are now there to make it easy for everyone to become involved.
Printing lead to an explosion of knowledge and ideas, and Web 2.0 technologies are doing the same.
After attending the web 2.0 summit and being an educator, I have to agree that the major problem is going to be the fact that network administrators will have to loosen the filters. In most places the network administrator is a person that came from the old NT 4 setting, and they do not want to relinquish the control.
But as more and more teachers, administrators, and students become more use to the web 2.0 technology they will have no choice. The current network administrators are dinosaurs if they do not embrace this new technology. Network administrators are not the only ones though teachers, administrators of schools and even school districts as a whole will also be dinosaurs.
People that work in schools must learn that it is now a digital society; and that you will have to embrace life long learning to stay current. The next major step I feel will be the use of electronic books that are being constantly updated.