Jacob+Steward



**Space for Reflection:** Well, it's been a strange two days. I suppose I had expectations coming into this, though I didn't know it. I was hoping that this would be an opportunity for dialogue about using technology, not just a hit list of favorite software. The best conversation I've been a part of so far occurred in cohort this morning. It was nice to sit back and listen to teachers who know what they're doing talk about the positive and negative aspects of using different techs. That feels a lot more honest to me, I guess. I just have a hard time trusting someone who won't acknowledge the drawbacks of a thing. I have an even harder time with people who get defensive when an ignorant (but curious) person, like me, asks about possible drawbacks or ideological differences. I know I can be a bit blunt, and I am working on it, so I try not to take it personally when feathers get ruffled, but when I'm learning something new and trying to think through it, from time to time I get a little bit lost in my own head. Oh well, that's going to happen now and then.

There have been bright spots, as I said. Steve Katz's workshop on the paperless classroom was excellent. I don't know if I agree with everything or want to use everything, but I left feeling as though I understood, and that he had given thought to the //purpose// of the approach he was advocating. I would gladly go listen to him again, and I will try out his approaches in my own classes.

I've also gained some insight into what I'm looking for in a class website. This has been troubling me for a while, as my google sites page was not very good, and didn't offer me the options I wanted. Upon reflection, and after learning that moodle has to be hosted by a school (and thus I can't count on always keeping a moodle page), no thank you moodle, and I’m still searching for that magic bullet. So what do I want? A place where I can keep everything that I can take with me. A place where my students can interact with what I have put there, responding and discussing. A place where kids can collaborate, and is made for me to monitor such collaboration. A place where parents and others can check in and see what’s going on. A place where students can submit their assignments, either privately or publicly, depending on the assignment or their preferences. Is this a blog? Oh, and I want it to be free. Free is good. I may need a combination of things. Google docs + outlook + some kind of blog, perhaps? What about a wiki? What’s a wiki? I guess I just need a home base that will allow me to bring everything together.

Blogging. Oh blogging. This workshop was pretty decent, though I guess I ought to have been in the remedial level. Again, I find that I want to ask questions that the others here have already either answered or dismissed. Do we want to blog? What advantages does it offer? The blog I’m seeing for Yokohama International School is pretty sophisticated. A lot more than just a page with text. For one teacher, her “blog” is more like a webpage. I guess that I’m ancient. What I would have called a web page is apparently a blog. Oh well.

Again, purpose here isn’t really being addressed, and I was somewhat shot down when I asked. I can provide some of the answers myself, but I don’t have the knowledge that experts should about how the use of resources (administrative time, teacher time, classroom time, student time, technology cost, etc) is more productive when applied to blogging than it would be to anything else. I get that blogs exist, and that it’s a form of writing and all, but it seems that a disproportionate amount of time is spent on it. Teaching kids to form thought in essays and support arguments is a good use of time, as it improves critical thinking and self-expression. If that were done through the use of blogs I could agree, but it seems that most blog advocates started there, but have now moved on, and perhaps forgotten the original purpose. When they started they probably wanted to use the blogs as outlet for express, critical thinking, and all of that, but over time they have tried to make the blogging more authentic, and now all they seem to want is just to give the blogs to the kids so that they can have an “authentic experience.” Well, what if the kids are authentically ignorant of how to construct a written thought? Couple that with the question of why teachers are reluctant to assess blog entries (I don’t want to judge their creativity.), and you realize that these blogs aren’t teaching anything. Yes, some kids will get better, but I don’t want to use my own personal time or my classroom time to provide kids with a forum to verbally masturbate.

I question also the notion that the school can be said to be a responsible educational institution if it provides kids with the opportunity to abuse each other. Give the “they can already do it” argument a rest. That is a logical fallacy. We know that just because something can be done, or is being done, is no reason to continue to do it. If we’re going to go through and punish the kids for it anyway, why allow them to do it? It’s one thing when it only hurts them (like making them keep track of their own assignments and work), but it’s another issue when it hurts other kids. If they can already do it, why do we need to provide the forum?

Oh, and a little bit of an issue with creative commons: the loader of the image may not have the right to actually post the image. For instance, I just saw the cover of //Entertainment Weekly// posted on Flickr with the Creative Commons filter on. This tells me that there is no way (as of yet) to prevent a person from posting an image and saying it’s available to everyone, even if they really don’t have the right to do so. This calls into question all of the content. Even if I find a picture of a kitten pawing at a dandelion, there’s no way for me to know if the poster actually had the right to post it. On the other hand, if I use Google images, then I am linked to the site of origin for that picture, and thus am able to see if I have the right to use it. The question is thus the right to use or not. Which is the better assumption for students to have? I would rather have my kids assume that they are not allowed to use it until proven otherwise, rather than assume they can and no proof to the contrary will ever be offered. In the end, I would prefer that they have difficulty finding pictures they can use, but all pictures they find are 100% legal for certain, than that they find all the pictures they want but can’t know if they’re actually stealing someone’s intellectual property.

And maybe that's this new frontier of technology in a nutshell. The potential to do amazing things brings with it the potential to cause amazing problems. Just like with any other powerful tool, technology is not good or bad by itself, but it made so by the attentiveness and respect of the teacher. There's nothing really new. But I'm still confused regardless.

**Ideas and Takeaways:** I NEED a web page. I ought to Twitter. Blogging looks like fun. It's not enough to simply check in with my students about my class, but I need also to check in about them and their lives, too.

When do we NOT want to use technology? Don’t we want to get the kids away from forever going to the internet for answers? If they do this, they never really take the info and make it their own, and thus can’t make connections. They have to have knowledge in their heads already to connect any new learning to any old learning. How do we get kids away from that? What about problem solving?
 * Questions:**

What software do blogging teachers use? What if I’m a teacher wanting to do it with my class? How can I find software to make a blog a part of my class webpage?

What about calendars? If a calendar is posted online, doesn’t that free students from needing to pay attention to due dates and assignments? Parents will now take charge, and continue running the lives of the kids. It’s something the kids claim not to want, but they resist ever learning to organize themselves.


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