Blog Bits
I cleaned out my aggregator today and had some posts saved that had at least one thing I found thought-provoking. So without much time to fully blog on any of these, I’ll just reference them here.
From an April 9, 2006 post from David Warlick - Rapidly Changing Times mean Rapidly Changing Contexts: “...as time moves forward, and as our technologies, challenges, and cultures change, there are those who would, with the best intentions, enact policies that have the affect of sinking our children down to a world and a time that these policy makers are more comfortable with, and sink them away from any chance to take part in the wondrous possibilities that rapidly changing times afford us.” David’s wording reminded me how 20th century some of us are, and how we know not the harm we are doing at times.
Christopher Harris has some equally powerful wording in his posting Why Filters Don’t Work: “When did education become a war? I have often encountered this approach to students as felons in technology staff with no education background (they are there to keep the network safe and students just mess things up and cause problems apparently)...” It is interesting to note that most districts have IT people running the place. Slowly though, I see a swing in the other direction. Now don’t get me wrong, we need good IT to insure the infrastructure is in top working order, but I think we too often blindly allow them to micromanage the place way too much.
Off the Daily Edublogging Update - April 21, 2006, Tom Hoffman is quoted, weighing in on the issue: “It seems to me that the people with the choke hold on the web filters in our schools aren’t educators, and often are largely unaccountable. On the whole, ed-tech seems to be subservient to IT. How the hell did that happen?” Good question.
One of my recent favorite finds is the Learning is Messy blog. Brian Crosby in his post, Working, Breathing, Reproducible, Intriguing Models, talks about “getting it.” I often, very often, wonder if people (teachers, adminstrators, school boards, community at large) are getting this whole technology thing. It has been and still is way too much about the tech and not enough about the teach. And echoing Brian, “You can’t just show most people – you have to show them and explain it to them and then answer their questions and then show it to them again and then explain it to them again and then show them how this relates to things they already do – takes the place of this and makes it even better and does this and this and this!” We haven’t yet learned that new technologies require new ways of doing business. That is why we need to reexamine pedagogy first. Once we do that, then it will be easy (or easier) to “get it” - to see how these technologies can be used as a lever to improve learning.
And lastly, speaking of reform measures, be sure to read June Ahn’s blog Praxis Makes Perfect. June is interested in issues of high schools and reform. He has some excellent posts that ask some very good questions.
Randy, the mass filtering/blocking pheonomenon in schools seems to be one of fear more than one of pedagogical purpose. I couldn’t agree with you more. We talk about this all the time. Let’s team up with students rather than pit ourselves against them.
Although I would wager a bet that *plenty* of educators (not just techie) ask that filtering/blocking be put into place. Hey, just ask the Department of Ed. They require it, right? Libraries as well.
I will trackback my blog post on this…
Posted by arvind s grover on 04/25 at 10:11 PM
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