johnhendron.net: hendron’s digest - a weblog

David Warlick recently posed some questions to a group he was speaking to out of state. I changed his questions, somewhat, as I might address educators, not policy leaders:

• What does the future hold for education?
• What aren’t schools and districts doing to prepare for the future?
• What change in society might help improve the impact of our jobs?

I think asking thought-provoking questions is an excellent way to begin professional development sessions; meetings, or discussions in the coffee house. I thought I’d proffer a few of my own ideas.

Future for Education. More challenges. We’ll continue to see society look at schools to solve the problems schools identify, but may not ultimately be responsible for. The future also holds promise. If we aren’t optimistic, we might as well accept defeat.

What aren’t we doing… In some cases we’re not preparing students with authentic experiences. I made the analogy today with a colleague about driving cars and the full, un-restricted Web in schools: “It’s like the bumper cars at the amusement park… I’d want my elementary son or daughter to have a bumper car experience with the Web in elementary school. In high school, it’s time for the bumpers to be removed, and scars inflicted; it’s only fair to prepare them with the real deal. We do as much teaching them to drive cars, right?”

In other cases, we aren’t keeping kids accountable to our own rules because the homes they come from value our rules or the idea of rules so little.

What changes could impact us… I for one would support more innovative practices to attract high-quality teachers. Tuition waivers for college, for one. More innovative use of planning and personnel (more personnel, to support more professional development, planning time, etc.). These are societal changes, in effect, because our at-large society needs to come together to support the wholesale improvement of our educational system. A country less obsessed with capitalism (i.e., fewer work hours, more vacation, etc.) would likely change the dynamics of homelife for students.

It’s late; I do require sleep.

I’m writing this in an airplane to Vancouver from Chicago. When I get home and read my mail, if recent trends continue I will hear about a few new Twitter followers, bringing the total up over one thousand. I think that with Twitter, something important is happening. But I’m having trouble figuring out what.

I like his analogy of Twitter being like background noise at a cafe.

Today many ITRTs in Virginia received a letter from the Virginia Department of Education on a training session for resource teachers on using so-called “Web 2.0″ tools. I call them read/write tools, but nitpicking aside, here’s the description of the course.

I wrote the DOE back, and this is what I said:

Thanks for the invitation to attend this session. I wanted to write you in concern for how the DOE can support school divisions for implementing Web 2.0 tools; namely, read/write tools such as blogs and wikis, but also other social tools including photo and video sharing services.

What I hear from so many folks within Virginia (and abroad) both through my own personal contacts and through read/write/social avenues is a refusal of school divisions to allow teachers (or in this case ITRTs) to use Read/Write and social web tools within their walls.

I could provide a number of examples, but the issue I feel is this:

This service is too open compared to what we’ve done in the past. There may be harmful material or opportunities there. Instead of raising the risk these dangerous tools could bring, let’s simply ban them.

Some hope that someday a cleansed version might exist for analogues to these tools. Others take risks and try them anyhow. And others ban and decry anything that has any association with read/write/social in the name.

It seems to me there are quite a few folks in VSTE interested in social, read/write tools, and now the DOE is promoting training in read/write tools. What might we do to calm the waters around Web 2.0 alarm for educators who want to use these tools within their walls, their classrooms, and their communities? If the DOE isn’t addressing this, I think they could certainly play a key role.

So, what do people do when they attend this training, only to find when they come back to work, that wikis (PBWiki, Wikispaces), blogs (edublogs, blogger, wordpress.com) and other sites (Flickr, YouTube) are banned via their Web filters?

Today’s day at work had some stress and strife associated with it; I don’t necessarily understand all the reasoning for me getting uptight, but it gave me an experience of working as some others do.

Today our ISP at work added their own filter which blocked some of our websites folks were trying to get to. Our ISP, is the county. We went into an agreement with them last year to share an Internet connection and save money.

Today they were testing out their own filter, and instead of just affecting the county offices, it affected everyone. Suddenly, folks started freaking out, e-mailing and calling me, wondering what was going on.

Then it hit me: this is what it must feel like at some other schools! No YouTube! No blogs! No wikis! No Google Docs & Spreadsheets! Phew. Welcome back to Web 1.0.

All the sites I needed were quickly unblocked, and the county was very accommodating by letting us “whitelist” sites we needed to use. But that hour or so when we didn’t know what was going on and panic set in, was very educational.

So what does that do for a school or district where… they go to a conference, or read a blog at home, or get a book on using Read/Write tools in the classroom, and they can’t do it at work? Does that encourage innovation in teaching?

I wrote to a colleague today in another district about their laptops being “locked down.” I asked the same question… if the tools you use can’t be innovative, then what’s the impetus for innovating (i.e., improving, changing, differentiating) your instructional habits?

We have our debates too, like other places, I’m sure, about what’s “instructional” and what’s not. Oh well, it’s after hours, time to relax, and to learn from what caused us stress.