Wee 1 Reflection

 Not a good idea to embed the google doc file on your blog.

planning processing we are going through at Western School District. I was oddly finding myself connected to Postman’s critical view of technology but understood my connection while reading the Reigeluth article.  Perhaps my connection to Postman is his view of power windows. After owning and driving a car for almost 30 years I finally had to purchase a truck with power windows. I know on the coldest day of the year I am going to be stuck with my electric window down. A problem/fear I never experienced until now.

First, when Postman writes “because the technologies are there, we often invent problems to justify our using them”. In our last “Technology Vision” meeting one discussion centered around the idea of implementing a 1 to 1 laptop plan. One side of the table feels very strongly that by creating a level playing field in technology: giving all students 6-12 laptops,  we could create an equal opportunity for all students to create, learn, and hopefully socially construct knowledge.  Myself a computer teacher and a person  has very good understanding of the power of computers, the notion of a laptop for all students is not the path we need to take right now. I believe our first step is to follow what Reigeluth suggest; “To meet the new education needs, we must switch from sorting to learning....”. This paradigm shift is a big one for a school community to accept. There a a number of beliefs and systems that need to be address for this to really happen.  Like Reigeluth and Joseph suggest technology is may provide us with the tools and the means for making the transitions easier.

Second, Reigeluth and Joseph propose “investing in finding ways technology can transform the way we teach, ways that technology can allow us to teach that weren’t feasible before.” is a quote that I feel is a path we could follow when developing a “Technology Vision”. Reading this I think of how the past 2 weeks in my computer classes the students reactions to multiple levels of  google apps. The big amazement is that work being done at school looks and feels the same as the work they do at home or where ever and when ever they have access. The second amazement is how the work they are producing is available to all their peers for review and they control who is allowed to edit, comment, and view. Very few have fully grasp the notion of being able to co-produce, co-research, or work in a “peer assisted learning and collaborative learning” environment offered by this Web 2.0 tool.

Finally, the challenge I see for our “Technology Vision” committee is not what platform or what type of connection tool every student needs, but how can we leverage our technology to connect every student to meet their individual needs.

Postman-
Information has become a form of garbage. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness. - facebook

But because the technologies are there, we often invent problems to justify our using them

any problems the schools cannot solve without machines, they cannot solve with them. Second, and with this I shall come to a close: If a nuclear holocaust should occur some place in the world, it will not happen because of insufficient information; if children are starving in Somalia, it's not because of insufficient information; if crime terrorizes our cities, marriages are breaking up, mental disorders are increasing, and children are being abused, none of this happens because of a lack of information. These things happen because we lack something else. It is the “something else” that is now the business of schools.