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.

To use both of my latest words of the week, I am not some reactionary iconoclast who cannot see outside my one-man-taking-on-the-world paradigm.

I use technology in the classroom. When available, I am not averse to it. Unfortunately, the singular emphasis on technology in our credential programs is short-sighted. New teachers use it as a crutch in their classrooms if it is available, thinking their 60-minute marathon PowerPoint lecture is the best thing since sliced Jesus. If unavailable, they freeze and go straight into survival mode — it would take more than divine intervention to dissuade them from bookwork and handouts.

That’s the crisis I see. There isn’t a crisis in accepting new technology among new teachers. Where I student teach, there isn’t reliable technology, and that’s the problem.

Address the funding issue if you want. I address the training issue.