 |
Comments (2)
Add Comment
|
Re: Gizmo-mania |
By Chris Moore on
2/21/2008 |
I found this article to be amazing. I agree that technology for the sake of technology is a huge waste of so many different resources.
As we move forward, we definitely need to keep our students and high quality professional staff development in our sights.
I think that one way this school district might have avoided their unique problem would have been to remain focused on students instead of headlines.
I would love to be part of a school district that is doing something nobody else is; but at the same time, I would hate to be in a district that forgets its real purpose. Students.
If we are unsure that our huge investments of time, technology and people are impacting students and schools in a positive manner, we are making a mistake on a grand scale, and it is our students who will pay the real price. |
|
|
Re: Gizmo-mania |
By Charles Wimber on
3/8/2008 |
Chris,
You make some valid points. Here are a couple valid points I would add:
1) rapid and disrutive technological change from global electronic robber
barons that lock-in, lock down (surviellance state) and lock-out (local
public and private non-profits, and small businesses)
2) using bare bones technology for the bottom-up as open source
software, open architecture hardware, open spectrum with a common
set of cyber-security tools that are affordable
Bare bones can mean sub-laptops and mini-mesh intranets that are backed-up with solar and batteries.
Here are some students like in Holly, Colorado or New Orleans, Louisiana that some of us have been involved with. Yes, from a disaster. Yes, where all the infrastucture was destoyed.
Now we face a recession with an energy crisis, the threat of pandemics,
and competing in a global marketplace.
We cannot ignore what China, Inida and Russia are doing.
We in the USA and Colorado are facing a change from an analog world to a digital world. Those who cannot afford a new digital TV can request a coupon from the federal government for a digital to analog converter box. And now from the threat of a recession in the USA, comes a federal tax rebate. These small amouts can be used is small ways for learning, earning, caring and sharing productiivty.
We have seen FEMA trailers in New Orleans and Holly. Such trailers have duel propane tanks. Have a generator for electricity. Yes, where, from necessity a FEMA trailer can be a home office, a home school, a house church and a node in a mini-mesh intranet that leads to the Internet for telecommuting and on-line learning.
Now, students watch TV, listen to the radio, talk on a cell phone and play computer video games. The challenge for any school district is to change the consumer electronics products our kids have at home and used as entertainment toys and discipline them to take these same products for learning, earning, caring and sharing productivity.
Yes, where students are not consumers but a producers of text, data, graphics, images, audio and videos. Yes as social records of their mastery.
The robber barons have given us "face book" where camera phones are used. All of this is a challenge for parents, teachers, as well as minsters and proprietors.
The scale of bare bones from the bottom-up like in New Orleans and Holly
is real where neighborhoods have to be restored. And we see in Colorado neigborhoods being brougt low through foreclosures.
A school district facing-up to these realities must take measured risks to engage in the future and with the support of community focus on learning, earning, caring and sharing productivity. The parity of the leaning, the equity of the earning, the hands-up of the caring and the shared responsiblity of mini-mesh intranets to restore neighborhoods.
Our children as mall rats in a shopping center influenced by a consumer religion enforced by an entertainment ethic need a fair chance to create, share, support and reward excellence K-20. |
|
|
|