Course V, Post IV

Fantastic article: "National Ed Tech Plan Advocates Radical Reforms in Schools". This article give a commentary on President Obama's education plan, a plan that seems to offer bold, meaningful, rigorous change...and therefore something that probably will scare the stupid people who seem to be becoming by the day a large, loud majority in my home country.

One of the key concepts in using technology in education is the use of it BY THE EDUCATORS! Becoming educated in "educational technology" isn't just learning how to use different tech tools for the students to learn, it's how to use it as a teacher to help me become a better teacher. We've spent lots of time in this program learning some very useful tools, but a major "next step" the National Ed Tech Plan promotes is teachers using technology to enhance their own learning. And that can't just be personal learning networks. The PLN as they've been defined in these courses is a good first step, but we are educators, and there has to be a level of academic rigor and peer review in those networks. It is one thing to seek commiseration with a peer, it is an all together different thing to seek and accept meaningful peer guidance and feedback. Furthermore, the online collaboration must be an environment must be a place where people can disagree. If you look at many of the blogs linked to the everybody involved in these courses, the comments are pretty much exclusively, "oh, you're so amazingly correct!" While not to discredit that sentiment, there does, again, need to be a place for intellectual dialogue. I'm STILL struck by the "OMG! How cool" aspect to so many of my colleagues regarding technology. "What? You're SKYPING IN AN EXPERT?? THAT WILL SIMPLY BE AMAZING!!!!!!!" Of course that expert my be just as deathly boring and a "real life" expert...and his delivery just as useless to students' learning.

This article finishes thusly;

Recommendations for teaching include:

1. The development of collaborative networks and expanded resources for teachers.
2. Promotion of technological fluency among teachers through pre-service and in-service development programs.
3. Developing "career-long personal learning networks" for teachers using technology.
4. Making more learning resources available to teachers through technology, "especially where they are not otherwise available."
5. Developing "a teaching force skilled in online instruction.

The more I think about all if it emerges what seems to be an underlying paradox to connectivity: being connected to everything under the sun seems to, at the base, create independent learners.