NY Times article and MacArthur Study

I wrote this as a comment to Will Richardson's post referring to the MacArthur Study and felt it could stand alone as its own post:

I found the MacArthur study and the New York Times article that referenced it to be very interesting. I put hard copies of both articles in my faculty room and they provided quite a bit of fodder for discussion. I do agree that the NY Times article didn’t go far enough and painted cyberspace as this Utopian place where everyone gets along and sings “Kumbayah.” We know based on the MySpace tragedy that cyberspace can be a dangerous place.

A lot of the teachers that I talked to still have the “creepy treehouse” mentality or someone they know has committed some type of online faux pas. When I entered Cyberspace for the first time in 1997 I’m sure I did too but I learned. I explained that students need to learn appropriate digital citizenship. I explained that they are part of the ISTE standards (hoping that they would ask what they were but that didn’t happen).

Technology is here to stay and is becoming a larger and larger part of our everyday lives. We need to stop treating it like contraband. We as Librarians and educators need to not bury our heads in the sand and teach kids how to act responsibly in Cyberspace. We also need to start Digital Citizenship education as young as possible.

Big Ideas 4 Education Focus Areas

Overhaul teacher education, and policies and procedures for professional development.

Facilitate an exploration of new education methods and pedagogy's that reflect today's children and their information experiences, abundant and connective information environments, and 21st century skills.

If you have been reading my blog since it started, I have talked about how much I learned about Web 2.0 and technology since the class I took this summer. I totally agree that we need to explore new methods and pedagogy's. There is one problem. Are these new methods being taught in teacher education programs? I had 2 student librarians come to observe me and I was talking to them about various web 2.0 applications and important names in the technology field. They had no idea what I was talking about. Granted, when I graduated Library School in 2001 I didn't know most of these things either.

Again, as I have blogged about before, I have started offering my faculty technology based trainings. I am happy to say that I will be teaching my entire foreign language department how to create pod casts. I have only scratched the surface. I am hoping that later this year or next year I can start showing the faculty how to use some of the web 2.0 resources in their curricula.

I did have some student related victories. I taught a 6 week session about Photo Story. I also created Photo Stories to use during Religion. Another member of the department requested CD's of the stories I used so that she can use them in her class.

I feel like I have made some progress but I know I have a ways to go.

Another Vision of 21st Century Learners

A Vision of Students Today

Information Revolution

Big Ideas 4 Education

David Warlick set up a great website where people have the opportunity to post their ideas about how to make education better. I have had so much fun putting in my ideas. Here is your chance to vent and have a stake in fixing our education system here in the U.S.