Techlearning blog

I agree David, this is all simmering in my brain too. Transformation, revolution, 21st Century,second wave...... how can we encourage those firmly entrenched teachers and administrators to loosen at least one foot?

Wow, thanks so much for drawing my attention to this article, David. This is great. I like the metaphor of a "sheathed sword" too. How many of the teachers and students we work with don't realize they even have a sword? How many rarely use their sword, and do little on a daily basis to keep it sharp? How many administrators realize that the students now have swords, but are attempting to keep them all out of the school (and off the school network) by using 21st century metal detectors (network firewalls and content filters) in a noble but perhaps misdirected effort to keep everyone safe? If we all have swords, we all need to be talking about how to use them safely and constructively. More impetus for us to extend the conversations about these things beyond the limited scope of the edublogosphere and out into the wider world!

Very interesting entry today... I agree with you all (David, Ted, Cheryl, and Wesley) in principle. Our school district even has all the most popular email sites banned. Talk about getting extreme!

I would like to say that there is a fine line with everything. Just as free speech doesn't mean you can falsely shout fire in a crowded theater to purposely cause panic, use of the internet doesn't mean anything goes. I don't think you are saying this, but I do want to emphasize the need to help protect our students from accidentally coming upon inappropriate content.

As I recently wrote about a similar experience to school censorhip at www.smeech.net, I think we have a human problem as much as our use of firewalls, etc. Too many districts are too slow to respond to firewall updates when sites are blocked that are actually appropriate.

Anyway... I agree to a certain extent... but there is a fine line!

Scott Meech

I enjoyed the article and Time's acknowledgment of the new synergies of a new age. Perhaps it will give us Web 2.0'ers fodder for advocating reform. Two things bothered me about the articles: I didn't notice any of the people profiled having mentioned that they learned any of their skills at school and secondly - I do not like this idea of be anything and be anybody for the sake of popularity or "downloads." Myspace isn't really "my" space and you tube isn't really "your" tube it is the world's and there is a value and richness in privacy.

I'd like to have seen some people doing some really great things like the kids with WorldVoices.

Educators as a whole need to wake up and learn to make their information relevant and exciting to a generation of kids learning online in their spare time.

Heavy handed blocking of Internet sites and services in the name of student safety is like banning all school trips because you *might* walk by an inappropriate store or neighborhood. Many of the teachers in the schools with which I work tell me that not only are their students blocked, but so are they. Over blocking potentially causes much more damage than the protection of the students it purports to serve.

For a few years toward the end of my teaching career I was hired as a technology education specialist. My job was to help teachers to understand the possibilities open to them by using computers in their classrooms. I found one trend utterly amazing: more of the older teachers were more willing to embrace technology and make use of it in their classes than were younger teachers. Younger teachers had not been taught how to use technology and were falling back on how and what they had learned as students. Also, administrations are extremely reluctant to approve technology because of the many scare stories that have appeared. I can guarantee that many more students do NOT abuse the use of the web in schools than those who do. After all, that's what makes great news. Finally, students who are not taught responsibility will not have any; my class had no firewalls and I had only one student who used the internet inappropriately and only once after we had a talk about it.

When I look into the Time Technology Mirror, I laugh and think how far we still have to go.

Ted and David have handled the dichotomy between the future and the present state of thinking in schools.

I often, get lost in technology.
PHONE
I have a new phone. I have a new one because the service from the old phone, the provider was good, until the newest one came out and I could not find a power source.

I did find one, but it broke. Finding another one on the web, which was not appropriate. I was panicked. The service provider didn't care. Their solution was a new phone. I paid cash for my Treo, but I had to reconsider.It seemed like a quick solution , find it on the web or somewhere, but this TREO, after the new one came out .. there were no power sources to be had without a lot of trouble, and I was on the road, Dallas , Houston, New York, Chicago, Tampa , Chicago , New York.

There is something about having a powerful tool that does not work and a bunch of "salespeople " who don't care about service that makes you like pencils as technology, but I continued to try to find a power source. Found one. It broke. Arrgh. So I humiliated myself and went back to Sprint. I was told that they had no responsibility for power sources or info, for a
product that was more than three months old. I am thinking , my contacts, my resources, my data, my photos and so I ordered a new one.
Ask me if it ever came even after email verification.
So I am learning a new phone, and have a new service.It did take me a while to find how to
power it up. Hidden latch. I had to ask my husband I was that frustrated.It was nowhere in the book and I am timid with small tools. I like the new phone, it is very tiny. Nothing like the original cell phone I had that only worked in some places in the world. This one has bluetooth technologies. The only problem again is the powersource , but I have learned to keep it in my purse. ( Lots of people leave
the connectors in hotels. Once I did and went back to the hotel to ask if they found it. There were so many to chose from I wasn't sure that I had my own.. for a while. ( road warrior I am).

HDTV

I am playing with my new HTDV.
Getting someone to install cable was a long wait, but finally they came.I am learning to be careful with the remote and to click the right one. But I am motivated to continue because of the quality of the picture and the
content, even though I saw some of the stuff on cable when it was on regular television. The HDTV is wonderful. I used to go and see it , at the Smithsonian. You could see the sweat on a sumo wrestler, the individual feathers of a bird, the separate waves in a surf. So no matter what the learning curve is.. I will continue to learn so that I can be a good user.

How Many Ways Have I Stored Music?

I have the newest Ipod. I laugh. Perhaps we have been through so many devices that this one is easy for me. Got the red one. Reflected on my various collections of music and the fact that the last types of music I invested in again are trash in a way... maybe that is why we are being featured.

Its not just school applications, its medicine, thinking of the drugs that create the possibilities for us to live longer and better.

In cooking we have a plethora of technical tools much safer than the tools of yesteryear.
Would you give up your microwave/ and I love the refrigerator with the icemaker.Talk about technology.

Household tools have also changed.I don't have all of the new technologies , but I look at them.

When I was a teacher in the classroom. I had a set of Readers Digests that were museum quality, ( they were very old) I read the terrible things that the public said about the use of radio( which is about 100 years old, and the use of photographs.I could share them with you, but my principal threw them out. She considered them untidy and old. Hello?

Hold on, leapfrogging technologies are coming, and there will always be those who want to hang on to the past, and to block the uses of technology , but mostly in schools. Think spatial learning, Internet 2, Grids for Kids, and Teragrid.The tools that are available to us as educational professionals are so awesome.Maptools , GIS, interactive resources, digital libraries, books, and access to learning places.I can borrow from the National Gallery of Art, I can take courses from a number of learning places.

We have crippled a whole generation of kids because of NCLB, and the emphasis on grade level learning, and the use of a certain kind of math, and reading. It took a lot before those who were blind to that practice woke up too. But I digress.

How many people would give up their cell phones?

How many people would go back to the original coffee maker and grinder, non programmable?

Personal technology? So many things to think about giving up!

The dentist drill, want to go back to alcohol and a strong yank? I don't think so. I only travel without my electric toothbrush because of the TSA.

Technology is many things that affect our daily lives, that unexpectedly connect us, ease our work load, change the ways in which we think, and affect our learning paths.

There will always be someone who will test the use of technology and do something wrong.

When Art Wolensky wrote about the video wall some months ago,I thought.. hmnnn. We know how You Tube has influenced the election. Can you say Macaca? ( I hope that is the correct way to spell it.

When I studied the cell phone and its use at NCSA, and talked about it teachers laughed in my face and said that no one would ever use cell phones. Hello?

Visualization and modeling, gaming and simulation. It is all coming and teachers better get ready.The technology is coming, will change and there will always be a digital divide of some sort, but technology is a moving
target. Did you know that they can program
knowbots to ferret out cancer cells in the body? Do you think someeone with cancer would say, well, I just want the old ways of medicine.Open it up and take a look and then sew me back up while you decide what to do?

Creativity in technology, uses of technology require a learning curve and a willingness to change.
Lots of people are stuck in time, but mostly in school settings.Technology is transportation, communication , so many ways of affecting our lives..we deserve to be saluted as we make our way through the use of new modalities, I think.

I wonder what it is about schools that make it seem that we must live in the past while the world is going forward to the future in leapfrogging ways?

Bonnie Bracey Sutton

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