Quick note: It is hard to keep up with teaching and learning in late April when students and teachers have spring fever and the hockey playoffs are on and Dallas Stars are being awesome!! 

I was interested in this topic. As I said in my post on the discussion forum, I used a discussion forum, complete with chat with a group of students in a robotics programming course last year. I liked it a lot. One of the things I liked was that I just felt free to experiment with the environment with students. I didn’t have strong expectations about it one way or another, so it was interesting to just try different things. One of my goals was to work with students to develop the idea of chat for educational purposes, not just for social ones. There are so many new Web 2.0 capabilities, and it frustrates me when schools look at how students are using them, then make the decision to block them at schools. I understan the concerns. But my view is that instead of worrying and fretting over how students will misuse the technology, we actively adopt it and show students how to use it for useful purposes.

It makes me remember when I worked at a wilderness camp for emotionally disturbed and delinquent teenage girls. We allowed them to have knives, even though some of them had fighting problem. The idea was to teach them that knives were a tool, not a weapon . . . to teach them the appropriate care and safe use of knives. I feel the same way about technology. It is our role and duty as responsible adults o teach students the polite, respectful, appropriate use of the tools, not to turn a blind eye to them.

Continuing the CSCL discussion, though, I have also been more actively using a wiki and Google documents to assist in students’ collaborative work. I think these are effective tools, and in the links provided in this lesson, I was pleased to find other open-source, Web 2.0 resources. Cool. Too much stuff, too little time!!!

That statement gives one a little pause, though. If you think about it, it has some pretty serious implications for teachers. Even though some of these resources may be time-savers in the long run (I think that collaborative techniques can free teachers to be more of a mentor, distribute more of the learning responsibility among students when done well), there is a lot of work to be done to create good learning activities for students. First, teachers must learn to use the applications. They then must set up learning tasks, teach students to use the applications, and monitor students’ use of those applications. I think I am pretty good at learning new things in technology, and I feel overwhelmed with all the new things. What should I spend my time on? What things are worth the time in terms of good teaching. When I decide something is worth it, how do I find the time to create (and refine) the content that I plan to use with students? And, I work in a computer lab every day. I can try something new almost at a whim. But what if I also had to schedule the time for my classes to be able to access the resources. Plus anticipate how much time they will need to learn to use the technology + how much time they will need to complete the activity. . . It’s an overwhelming job. I think if we really want to modernize education and prepare students for 21st century learning and working, then we have to allocate more time for teachers to learn, plan, and prepare.

I have started reading a book, lately- Dreaming in Code. At least in the beginning, it has a lot to say about the idea that it is practically impossible to anticipate the time necessaryt to create good software. Things just take longer than you imagined/planned for. I think it is much the same with teacher use of technology. Everyone knows that we should spend more time in teacher training. But in the practical day-to-day world, we don’t allocate nearly enough of it. And even if we were to follow the recommendations for training time, I think we would find that it takes even more than we expected. It’s a dilemna, a difficulty, a challenge. I think it is important that we not underestimate the time element in creating and monitoring good, computer supported, learning tasks and environments.