Consider the top followed Twitter accounts and whether or not Twitter is for entertainment or education. And how do Twitter comments translate into other mediums? I concede the rest of my time to Josh Groban:
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tweets for Education?
Will Richardson approaches Twitter from a rather utopian posture whereby students can collaboratively learn 140 characters at a time. He bases a lot of his argument on his own experiences following other professionals which seems to illustrate a generation gap more than a new educational possibility.
Consider the top followed Twitter accounts and whether or not Twitter is for entertainment or education. And how do Twitter comments translate into other mediums? I concede the rest of my time to Josh Groban:
Consider the top followed Twitter accounts and whether or not Twitter is for entertainment or education. And how do Twitter comments translate into other mediums? I concede the rest of my time to Josh Groban:
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Yup, that was hilarious. Almost as good as Robert Goulet doing B.I.G. covers...
ReplyDeleteJosh Groban needs to write real songs (he hasn't put out an album since 2010 according to my Spotify research).
ReplyDeleteI'm fine with teachers assigning new media tasks like blogging, tweeting, and youtubing unless it becomes a crutch that prevents the hard work of learning a wide range of skills.
Did you come across this story?
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/03/students-demand-right-to-technology-in-schools074.html
I checked out that story and it seems like they're entering into a conversation that has been taking place for sometime now - and not really bringing any new arguments to the table. I had this conversation with my aunt a year or two ago (she is the superintendent (or something) in a school district where she is trying to incorporate more technology. She got mad when my brother (who was in high school) came home and said he had his phone taken away for using it in class. She thought it was the teacher's responsibility to use that instance as a way to reach him and teach through the phone.
ReplyDeleteNot only does this raise questions about the democracy of technology, but the only way I can think of making that situation more disruptive is to turn your lesson plan into a digital lesson. And I'm sure if that suggestion would have been thrown out there, he would not have been interested (I don't remember if I talked about it in my response to the danah boyd article on this blog - but check it out and see if I talk about the classroom and the treehouse/skating rink/mall - otherwise we can talk about it later).
Anyway. I don't know if this ever took off in Canada, but a few years back (under the direction of Microsoft) the "high-tech high" model started taking off - specifically in low-income neighborhoods (there were a couple in the Chicago area that we would play basketball against - they were beautiful schools... kind of a broken windows approach to education). Almost all of those schools basically failed. (while the book has an overt bias, there is some interesting history done with a number of these schools in "The Flickering Mind" http://goo.gl/5Ztde).
This mainly serves to support your point. The basic idea was: "the test results at this school are poor. The school doesn't have money to spend on technology. We'll give them money and technology. Their scores will get better." It was no longer about teaching/learning, community, and curriculum - technology became the ultimate answer but the problem was that they weren't asking the right question(s).