Week 2 - Blog Posting #3 - Media Literacy

I particularly enjoyed watching the video segment from TED about Gever Tulley's Tinkering School. After I watched it, I went through some articles I had saved on delicious.com because the video made me think of an article I had spotted a few months earlier in the New York Times.

I usually only bother to save articles on Delicious that are distinctly about education, social media, social media in education, Web 2.0, and so on, with the exception of maybe a few odd articles of special interest to me or the subjects I teach. This particular article, however, a book excerpt titled The Case For Working With Your Hands by Matthew B. Crawford, spoke volumes about education in a world blown sideways by new technology.

In this excerpt from his upcoming book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, Matthew B. Crawford makes a very compelling case (I think) for bringing back shop class, and for us to consider the return of the value of manual trades. I particularly loved this paragraph:

"A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work."

click here if you'd like to read on...

We all want our students to be media-literate. We have an obligation to teach them to post responsibly on the internet, comment respectfully, collaborate equitably, quote and cite honestly, and seek information mindfully. Yet there is another type of "literacy" that has value as well, and this is the place where the message of Crawford and Tulley might very well meet. What we do with students and computers in the spirit of active engagement is no more "fluff" than shop class.

(photo by me)

Endgadget article: Boston prep school nixes all the books in its library, replaces them with 18 e-readers

Boston prep school nixes all the books in its library, replaces them with 18 e-readers by Laura June posted Sep 5th 2009 at 8:45AM.

I just had to share this article with you guys. What do you think? I have mixed feelings. I love the idea of getting the students e-readers, but do we have to get rid of ALL the books? I also enjoy reading people's comments on the article. Share some of yours here!

Week 1 - Blog Posting #2 - Learning 2.0

Just this morning, I stumbled on this article in Education Week:


Filtering Fixes by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo
District leaders make changes to offer greater online access to students.

In the article, one teacher remarks, "I’m a big advocate for experiential learning, but it’s kind of hard to teach Internet etiquette or rules of how to act and interact online without exposing them to the stuff that’s out there,” Mr. Jenkins said. “It’s hard to teach those things in a vacuum.”(Manzo, 2009) While the article does focus on teaching children responsible internet behavior and learning how to be safe, it does point out the penny-wise, pound-foolish policy of the use of some filters. “We believe that you can’t have goals about kids’ collaborating globally and then block their ability to do that,” said Becky Fisher, the[...]technology coordinator."

The article also shows two interesting tables (shown above this post). Classroom lessons and assignments aren't the only things that suffer at the heavy hand of web filters: in a Twitter message this morning, @wbasinger tweets: "Internet filters and old software make PD [professional development] a real challenge" (twitter.com).

Let's see if any of my sites are unblocked today.

References:

Kennedy Manzo, K (2009, August 31). Filtering Fixes. Education Week, Retrieved 2009, September 2, from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/02/02filter_ep.h29.html?tkn=QN[FwPR%2BcQ5C163IrJXxrec3ENEZu1KEL9H9

"wbasinger", (2009, September 1). Twitter.com: @wbasinger. Retrieved September 3, 2009, from Twitter Web site: http://twitter.com/wbasinger/status/3695823916

Week 1 - Blog Posting #1 - Web 2.0

Today was the teacher's first day back at my school. It was mostly meetings, to share information we needed before the students arrived as well as notifying us of policy changes in the district.
One bit of information that caught my attention was one small line of text on the Welcome letter. It stated that the district was implementing new web-filtering software, and that we might notice some changes in which sites we could access.
Later that day, I spent some time in the computer lab going through some links on my school pages to make sure everything was accessible through the school network. My link for students to sign up for Zoho.com: blocked. My assignment calendar on Google: blocked. All of my Ning networks (I have three): blocked.
Granted, the technology coordinator assured me that, on request, sites could be unblocked; however, it called to mind echoes of the videos I watched on the FSO prompt for our blog posts. How can we engage our students with new media, and still teach them how to be responsible 'netizens', if we don't even have access?

In this excerpt from Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, the author takes an ironic, poetic look at how our hyper-vigilance is exactly what our students don't need:

Don't teach your kids this stuff. Please?

dear parent

teacher

administrator

board member

don't teach your kids to read

for the Web

to scan

RSS

aggregate

synthesize

don't teach your kids to write

online

pen and paper aren't going anywhere

since when do kids need an audience?

no need to hyperlink

make videos

audio

Flash

no connecting, now

no social networking

or online chat

or comments

or PLNs

blogs and twitter?

how self-absorbed

what a bunch of crap

and definitely, absolutely, resolutely, no cell phones

block it all

lock it down

keep it out

it's evil, you know

there's bad stuff out there

gotta keep your children safe

don't you know collaboration is just another word for cheating?

don't you know how much junk is out there?

haven't you ever heard of sexting?

of cyberbullying?

a computer 24-7? no thanks

I don't want them

creating

sharing

thinking

learning

you know they're just going to look at porn

and hook up with predators

we can't trust them

don't do any of it, please

really

'cause I'm doing all of it with my kids

can't wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two

can you?

(McLeod, 2009)

In another post from the same blog, he cites an excerpt from a letter by a frustrated teacher about 'net restriction in school, and refers to the approach by districts as the "bomb-to-kill-flea" method (McLeod, 2008). Only a little hyperbole?

Sources:
McLeod, S (2009, August 26). Don't teach your kids this stuff, please?. Retrieved September 2, 2009, from Dangerously Irrelevant Web site: http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/08/dont-teach-your-kids-this-stuff-please.html

McLeod, S (2008, January 14). I'd like an idiocy filter, please.. Retrieved September 2, 2009, from Dangerously Irrelevant Web site: http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2008/01/id-like-an-idio.html