Comments on: The Web as Human Development

By: Dereck Rhoads

Dereck Rhoads — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:00:54 +0000

Fear, plain and simple. Fear is what keeps us from totally putting ourselves out in public. Fear that our private life will not longer be private. And maybe that is a healthy fear to have.

By: Salamah

Salamah — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:35:00 +0000

I think one problem may be, an educator may feel they don’t have enough to share or that it’s not anything new. I am interested in trying any new technolgy. I am a new teacher. But when I heard about blogging, I have thought of trying it; but just feel I have nothing to offer anyone in a blog. It’s like I would question, “who would want to follow me or my discussions?” This is also how I feel about twitter. I think this may ring true for anyone, even if you have been teaching for years. You may feel intimidated like what I have experience in it is nothing new, others probably already know it.

I also agree with how it can also expose your vulnerabilities in your writing, theory, or philosophy. It can put you in a position to really have others judge you. In our class, we are in our bubbles.

I really would like to blog…but about what

By: Michael Walker

Michael Walker — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:45:47 +0000

Will,
I too am starting a 1:1 pilot this fall, and spent the past year working with the staff who will be piloting, exploring how they will teach differently. I set up a wiki to chronical our experience, showed them social bookmarking with Diigo, and asked them to explore and share their thoughts in discussion boards. I got a tremendous ammount of push-back, and a desire for more “direct instruction.” They were very reluctant to construct their own learning, despite the fact that they embraced doing that with their students next year!

I hope I can connect with Rob and learn along with him as we head down the path toward 1:1 learning!

By: Stephanie Richardson

Stephanie Richardson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:05:38 +0000

I, too, find it interesting that teachers seem to be the last to seek out social media. Yet at the same time, I don’t. There are a lot of expectations concerning teachers’ conduct both inside and outside of school, and while social media are an exciting way to connect with others, there’s always a little part of a teacher that’s wanting to make sure the private life stays private.

Couple that personal reluctance to use social media with the feeling of responsibility for all of “your” students using the media, and it’s no wonder there is some reluctance to use these collaborative tools in teaching.

That said, I think as society begins to expect everyone to use these tools (as in, “What?! You don’t have a Facebook account?!) teachers will begin to see the use in their classrooms.

By: Lora Cowell

Lora Cowell — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:46:20 +0000

As I began reading this, Parker Palmer’s “The Courage to Teach” came to mind. If you aren’t familiar with the work, Palmer looks at the teacher’s move away from the social nature of our work (isolated classroom teaching, not socializing with collegues) as a shift towards anonymity/safety. He encourages young teachers (the book is often used in pre-service training) to re-engage in the community…to put heart into the classroom as well as mind…to effect change through connection with student and colleague.

It may be a bit ironic that in a time when online society is expanding, our physical worlds may becoming more insular (sitting in my kitchen, on my computer, rather than interacting with my neighbor). Teachers, who, in responding to the increasing stress in schools may be withdrawing both physically and online. I know many who avoid social media as diligently as they avoid staff school extra-curricular functions. Does this place teachers in a particularly vulnerable place…unwittingly contributing to their own irrelevance, both in the communities where they work and in the online spaces where their students roam?

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:40:07 +0000

This might or might not be relevant to your point, but:

One hurdle I’ve seen in many teachers is that fear of transparency, particularly of exposing themselves online as writers. Some of the best teachers I’ve known were fair-to-embarrassing writers, and they knew it. And they didn’t want others to.

Side note: Arne Duncan’s ed.gov blog, I can only suspect, had posts in its early days written by Duncan (the voice of the writing was very similar to the voice of the Duncan we’ve all seen talking about “incenting” this for “dramatic” thats on video interviews). The grammar and usage errors, on this federal Department of Education ed blog, were just short of staggering. That transparent glimpse of Duncan-the-writer, if I’m right that it was him, was very short-lived. Now the blog reads like that of an intern striving for bureaucratese (with depressing success).

Tangent: Last week I had a beverage with an old colleague still teaching at my old school who drank the koolaid with me there, and has gone on to do some great stuff with wikis, to become an Apple Distinguished Educator, to become a teacher-leader in that 1-to-1 school. He mentioned a math teacher who hated the pressure to embed tech in his teaching because he couldn’t see how it improved on teaching math the old way. It made me wonder if/wish that there was a resource of exemplary teachers, by subject matter, for n00bs to explore. I told him to send the guy to Dan Meyer, but a fuller resource for all cases like that would be a good thing.

I have a backache.