Medicine makes us well when we’re sick, but it can do great harm if used inappropriately. The same goes for technology. I updated my tweets today to see that John Pederson had posted a link to a Scholastic Administrators article highlighting the battle schools are waging with the way some students are using today’s technological goodies.
It’s a serious issue, and one that must be addressed via a combined effort between teachers who are clamoring to use collaborative technology in the classroom and administrators who face pressures from parents and school boards to implement policies to curb it.
In the article, author Pamela Wheaton states that:
“Schools across the country are waging a war against technology tools gone bad. Read how some districts defend their classrooms against the new school thuggery—from iPod cheats to cell phone punks and sneaky Web surfers.”
The accounts of technology abuse in several schools across the country absolutely point to a need for a collaborative effort between administrators, teachers, and parents to model appropriate use practices to students who, in the absence of such modeling, are running amok – a point supported by a Will Richardson statement relaying that “adults simply don’t know how to model appropriate digital behavior.” Obviously, this statement has to be tempered a little, as there are parents, teachers, and administrators who stay on top of technology and are “with it” enough to teach young learners how to use it properly. I witnessed the way my older brother and his wife introduced technology to their two daughters, and guidance was most definitely the order of the day.
Today marked the first day back for teachers in my school district. Most teachers at my middle school with whom I shared the idea of enhancing education through the use of collaborative web technology seemed relatively unaware of the tools we have come to rely upon. However, I did learn that a neighboring elementary school principal showed her staff the Did You Know 2.0 video developed by Mr. Karl Fisch, famed author of The Fischbowl staff development blog for Arapahoe High School. This tells me that change is on the horizon… and it’s happening at the K-6 level in this area first. Now is the time for Middle and High School teachers to work together with parents and administrators in an effort to develop some sort of game plan to follow as these young students leave 5th grade expecting to utilize the latest in web-based collaborative technology.
It has to be said that instances where students are misusing technology to the extent that we see in the above referenced article occur with minimal frequency, and there is no reason for teachers and administrators to close shop on Web 2.0 technology in a panic over what may happen.
Wheaton’s article has perhaps a bit too much of a Brave New World / Fahrenheit 451 bent to it. In one instance, she alludes to chaotic insanity breaking out in schools as students gain access to community based open Wi Fi signals and run rampant circumventing the prohibitive broadband access measures put in place to thwart them. Though, these are issues that warrant planning on our part so that we may do our jobs as educators.
Wheaton tones down the rhetoric and says as much, stating:
“The good news is that of all the people in the world, educators are best able to solve these problems. Technology is only the tool for bad behavior, and teachers have been teaching right from wrong since the days of Plato.”
Technorati Tags: technology, new media, abuse
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
2 Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Always nice to hear stories of change that is coming.
Have a great 2nd day, Kevin
Thanks, Tracy! Yes. It is very exciting to see change in the mix!