Should our web tools be tightly connected or loosely aligned, and how do these decisions impact the classroom? This is an interesting question because I believe that web tools should be tightly aligned to state standards and content but, loosely aligned for students to explore. Take a look at this from Mohamed Amine Chatti's fascinating blog
http://mohamedaminiechatti.blogspot.com where he posted Michael Wesch's 2007 video Rethinking Education here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xb5spS8pmE. Wesch talks about how the public is engaged in a level of writing, blogging and interactivity in unprecedented ways. Scanning, searching, editing, links, input, output are just some of the ideas that this video speaks about. Students want to be active, they want to create, categorize and not just consume. Yes, let's rethink the university! Let's rethink how kids learn and how they want to learn. How do we catch up with new processes? The public is living in a much larger sphere of information and knowledge. People want to make, create, share and explore collectively and together. Web tools like Tumblr, Google Sites, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious and more allow users to contribute to society with their opinions, ideas, pictures, thoughts, statements in an astounding way.
My question is--are teachers, administrators, principals really thinking about how to revise and redo course curriculum? It takes work and its totally different that teaching from the place where you are the giver of knowledge. Today, "we are harvesting collective intelligence" and we are on a new journey. People constructing knowledge--i.e. wikipedia--is good! Where are our students? What are our students doing? Let's Rethink Education!
EDUBETH---IDEAS ON EDUCATION
Hi Edubeth - Great post.
ReplyDeleteMy humble opinion to your big question is both yes and no! I think the stake holders you mentioned are too busy trying to keep above water to seriously do what you suggest. At the same time, the CCSS does re-imagine how curriculum is approached and people are beginning to take notice. Purists would say it does not go far enough, but it is a huge shift considering the system scope of the change (42 states in counting.) Let me turn it back to you, do you think the Common Core consortium will be successful?