So I’m finally wading through some of the gajillion posts on Bloglines I haven’t been able to read, and via Ewan McIntosh I found this really interesting presentation from Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network. It’s a pretty sobering perspective on the access challenges we face. Some highlights:
Two-thirds of America’s poor do not have access.
More than 80 percent of non high school grads are offline.
Because the middle class has gotten connected, Internet access is generally assumed in this country, meaning the digital divide is more problematic than ever.
With more an more government services going online, the result is only the priveleged can take part.
Most bloggers and blog readers are white and well off which squeezes many out of the public discourse.
There are more Internet users in NYC than in all of Africa.
He also points to this project he’s involved with in Atlantic City that is bringing video blogging to inner city kids. The plan is to have them create video shorts about their lives in a low income, high crime commmunity.
The faster these technologies move forward, the wider the divide is going to grow.
From the “Shameless Self-Promotion” Dept. comes this link to a back page column I wrote for this month’s Technology and Learning magazine. I was more than flattered to be asked to write the second in this series after the inimitable David Warlick led it off in October with a piece on podcasting.
This is actually the first of four articles that I’ll have out in the coming months. It’s still amazing to me that I’ve actually become the published author I always dreamed about in high school. Thanks in large measure to finding Weblogs.
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Take a look at the comments on the C-Net article on blogs in schools and you’ll understand why we need, um, blogs in schools:
Blogs are NOT a valid school subject. Blogs are a sloppy
communications technique, rarely containing anything really
worth while, and rank just one notch above text messaging on
cell phones. We’ve got kids who can’t add, can’t read, and can’t
write in real sentences, and wouldn’t know a verb if it bit them.
There’s where the real education effort needs to be placed. Sure,
that’s not ‘fun’, and kids do want to play rather than learn, and
teachers seem to go out of their way to avoid being actual
teachers.
Sorry folks, but US kids need real help, not junk like this teacher
is peddling. As noted, “… Fisher is among a small but growing
number of teachers and professors experimenting with
classroom blogs….” And maybe that defines the real situation.
The kids are experiments in arcane educational techniques by
educators more interested in notoriety than success, and where
failure is basically irrelevant.
Where to begin.
1. Blogs are not a subject. They’re a learning tool that can be used in any subject as a way to synthesize, think and write critically, and reflect. In addition, blogging teaches deep reading, something that the author of the comment obviously didn’t do with the article.
2. Blogging is inherently not a sloppy communications technique, and blogs done well contain worthwhile content because they demand the author/blogger articulate a point of view that is subject to the review and response of a real audience.
3. Blogging is not necessarily fun. If done well, it’s work. Clarence’s students, who are being taken to task, might be having fun in the process of blogging, but they’re also using their brains in creative and expansive ways. Funny that the author of the comment is doing so as well but just doesn’t recognize it.
4. Clarence, if you read this, understand that you are not peddling junk. You are peddling reality. The fact that you have your kids blogging has nothing to do with the problems they may have in math or other subjects. If anything, you are giving them an opportunity to remediate the problems they have by engaging them in some real conversation and thoughtful learning practice.
5. Yep, we’re all blogging for the fame. We obviously don’t care what happens to our students, and if they fail, so what? There will be a new “new thing” coming down the road tomorrow that we can hitch our reputations to. God forbid we have educators who are dissatisfied with the status quo and act to change it.
And the biggest irony is the comment comes from an “educator” who wants to stick with a system that he admits is “getting stomped in education.” I can assure you, blogs haven’t been around long enough to bring that about.
Look, blogs and blogging are not a panacea for a system that by many accounts has not been able to keep pace. They are not going to solve the inequities inherent in our educational system, nor are they going to change much of anything without teachers that sincerely want their students to learn. But in the hands of thoughtful practitioners, blogs have great potential to teach our students to think and learn and create work subject to higher standards than they do right now.
