This month Time magazine has proclaimed "you" to be their person of the year for the role each and every one of us is playing in the transformation of the world wide web from an information repository to an interactive global community. Time calls the growing community of bloggers, podcasters and videographers a revolution with sites such as blogger, youtube and myspace attracting millions of subscribers and daily hit counts in the hundreds of millions.
Meanwhile in education we seem to be stuck in a debate around how much access we allow students, how we can best monitor and restrict their internet access and what is the best way to get music to play over the entire length of a powerpoint. While we lament funding cuts and grouse about the apathy of today's students and how they are just not interested in things we turn our backs on the many resources that are at our fingertips thanks to the growth of the read/write web. How many teachers do you know who are accessing the hundreds of soldiers blogs from Iraq or Afghanistan. How about using webcams to link up with other classes around the world or access one of the thousands of virtual fieldtrips from places like NASA and the San Diego Zoo. How about taking advantage of the price drop in digital cameras and designing lessons that put them in the hands of their students or encouraging students to create videos or podcasts. How many teachers have their students publish to the web and seek feedback from people with no vested interest other than having an opinion. Don't get me wrong I don't think it is the teachers' faults. I think it is a result of working in a system that has long been a dispenser of knowledge. In this environment information is to be given out in small, controlled doses so that progress can be measured and standards maintained, or created, in a sort of chicken and egg scenario.
While one to one laptops initiatives are seen to be cutting edge in the education world and have school districts all around North America scrambling to try and remortgage our children's' educational future so we can provide them with shiny new computers with no real sense of how they will be used. Perhaps school districts should take a closer look at why the large number of students who actually have their own laptops are not bringing them to school or using them in their classes. Maybe it is because students are not allowed to text message in class, MSN is banned, assignments are not online, email is blocked, wireless access is not provided and internet resources are not part of the lesson plans. The reality is that I do not need the school system to buy my children a laptop or monitor their online activity, I will do that. What I do need is a system that encourages rich learning activities that take advantage of the power, simplicity and creativity of a vibrant online community.
Everybody seems to get the power of the read/write internet and more so they are simply going online. Teenagers chatting about the latest episode of the OC, preteens creating online pets on www.tamagotchi.com, parents sharing the latest pictures of their kids and grandparents video chatting with their grandchildren. Everybody seems to be tapping into the power of the internet and molding it to their own purpose so what are we waiting for in education. Jump in, explore, play its OK, we might just learn something along with the students. In education we keep investing in infrastructure and hardware asking ourselves is this revolutionizing education yet. What we really should be doing is looking to the kids and the online community to see what we can take advantage of before the revolution runs right over us.
Anyways, this is a little deep for Christmas vacation but if you want to read a position paper I wrote about technology not being just a tool feel free to download it here. Not Just a Tool
Meanwhile in education we seem to be stuck in a debate around how much access we allow students, how we can best monitor and restrict their internet access and what is the best way to get music to play over the entire length of a powerpoint. While we lament funding cuts and grouse about the apathy of today's students and how they are just not interested in things we turn our backs on the many resources that are at our fingertips thanks to the growth of the read/write web. How many teachers do you know who are accessing the hundreds of soldiers blogs from Iraq or Afghanistan. How about using webcams to link up with other classes around the world or access one of the thousands of virtual fieldtrips from places like NASA and the San Diego Zoo. How about taking advantage of the price drop in digital cameras and designing lessons that put them in the hands of their students or encouraging students to create videos or podcasts. How many teachers have their students publish to the web and seek feedback from people with no vested interest other than having an opinion. Don't get me wrong I don't think it is the teachers' faults. I think it is a result of working in a system that has long been a dispenser of knowledge. In this environment information is to be given out in small, controlled doses so that progress can be measured and standards maintained, or created, in a sort of chicken and egg scenario.
While one to one laptops initiatives are seen to be cutting edge in the education world and have school districts all around North America scrambling to try and remortgage our children's' educational future so we can provide them with shiny new computers with no real sense of how they will be used. Perhaps school districts should take a closer look at why the large number of students who actually have their own laptops are not bringing them to school or using them in their classes. Maybe it is because students are not allowed to text message in class, MSN is banned, assignments are not online, email is blocked, wireless access is not provided and internet resources are not part of the lesson plans. The reality is that I do not need the school system to buy my children a laptop or monitor their online activity, I will do that. What I do need is a system that encourages rich learning activities that take advantage of the power, simplicity and creativity of a vibrant online community.
Everybody seems to get the power of the read/write internet and more so they are simply going online. Teenagers chatting about the latest episode of the OC, preteens creating online pets on www.tamagotchi.com, parents sharing the latest pictures of their kids and grandparents video chatting with their grandchildren. Everybody seems to be tapping into the power of the internet and molding it to their own purpose so what are we waiting for in education. Jump in, explore, play its OK, we might just learn something along with the students. In education we keep investing in infrastructure and hardware asking ourselves is this revolutionizing education yet. What we really should be doing is looking to the kids and the online community to see what we can take advantage of before the revolution runs right over us.
Anyways, this is a little deep for Christmas vacation but if you want to read a position paper I wrote about technology not being just a tool feel free to download it here. Not Just a Tool
Click here for the Time magazine cover story Cover Story
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