OFF: Twitter Folks, My Sort of Disclaimer

January 18, 2008 in Reading Response
Tags: iconoclast, literacy, off-topic, paradigm, technology, twitter

Looking at my Web traffic from this handy-dandy WordPress Dashboard, I’m seeing quite a few people coming from Twitter.

Welcome. I wish I had something more substantial to say. If you’d like, there are a few links you should probably check out, so you don’t think I’m a Luddite-esque technophobe.

Here, I suggest school reforms suggested by long-tenured teachers, reforms that might actually work. Here, I consider multiple forms of literacy, drawing on the example of the Internet. Here, I talk about stuff that really matters.

Classroom Technology as an Expensive Distraction

January 18, 2008 in Personal Reflection, Reading Response
Tags: chalkboard, classroom, education, pedagogy, smart board, teaching, technology, technology in the classroom, web 2.0, whiteboard

Editor’s note: there’s some pathetic sort of disclaimer for the bile from this hate-spewing technophobe. Please read it here.

We need to teach. We need to teach well. It doesn’t matter if we’re using chalkboard, whiteboard or SMART Board if we’re not doing at least that much.

In time, technology will come and will be fully integrated, but for now it remains an expensive distraction.

Check out the discussion of this post.

I believe that while technology in the classroom adds something to a good lecture, but that in the end the technology mandate they discussed there is more like treating the symptom than the cause.