I have recently ben looking through my school's handbook and I am begining to realize how out of date it is becoming. Teachers in my building are doing wonderful things with technology. Using cutting edge software with their smartboards that allows them to record entire lessons and make those lessons, along with the power point component, available to students on their IPODS. Teaching using wikispaces and encouraging students to spend more time in front of the computer than ever before.
Yet the handbook reads, as I am sure most handbooks read, very much like I remember mine reading when I went to high school.
Why not let a student carry an IPOD or a PDA around? It's almost a mixed message we are sending to this generation- on the one hand we are constantly finding new ways to connect to them using their language and on the other hand we are frowning upon the use of the same technology we are encouraging.
I can see both sides here and I don't exactly know were I stand yet- I do know that a student can walk out of one class in which the are encouraged to use their IPODS to stimulate their creative writing and into another class or even the hallway where they might have their IPOD confiscated as per the handbook.
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These are great questions to ask, and we should be asking them. They strike at the most burning question regarding schools today: "what type of students do we want to produce?"
When students walk in our doors in the morning, we essentially ask them to "power down." How do we change that? I think it is by meeting them on common ground through not only technology, but also by giving them a stake in what they are learning, by showing that you, as a teacher or administrator, are willing to be transparent. Are teachers producing work that is worthy of being seen by the community? I think that answer is always yes, it is just getting them to have the courage to promote it.
Cheers.
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