Comments on: The Apocalypse is Nigh – Stager on Twitter, Flickr and NECC

By: Dana

Dana — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 07:24:36 +0000

I don’t know that I care much what educators are doing on twitter so long as they are teaching, but I think too much hope is being placed on technology in the classroom.

When I toured schools in the Rio Grande Valley as a new teacher, Runn elementary stood out to me as an interesting example. A fair number of the children come from surrounding colonias, substandard housing “editions” you would hardly believe existed in the USA. The school had recently received a multi-million dollar grant to incorporate technology in the classroom, and each room was equipped with state-of-the-art computer equipment. They were integrated into the curriculum, and at the end of it, they discovered that the children still couldn’t read, speak English or do math.

So they put the dust covers back on them, and focused on what the kids needed: basic skills.

I see the same thing going on with all of these new developments. Like how blogging is supposed to revolutionize education. There is already enough “noise” in the classroom.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:50:14 +0000

Quick apology to Alan – because your comment contained more than 3 links, it was automatically considered spam by Akismet. I de-spammed it and now it can be viewed.

By: Mechelle De Craene

Mechelle De Craene — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:29:23 +0000

I agree with Gary and Matthew.

Mechelle

By: Terry Freedman

Terry Freedman — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 22:35:54 +0000

Matthew, I think you overstate your case somewhat, but I too have reservations about Twitter, from a management and effective learning point of view:
http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1122.php

Cheers
Terry

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:48:30 +0000

Vicki,

Like I said in the addendum to my article, you’ll get a full response as soon as I have time.

Matthew

By: Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:47:07 +0000

Don’t really care to take time on this off task debate. I do believe that the blogosphere is being mischaracterized, however, I’m doing some important work on tagging standards and on teaching other teachers the appropriate pedagogical uses of blogs versus wikis to determine which is best depending on the outcomes desired.

Biff —
Don’t consider my analysis exhaustive, however, I am connected with 140 other educators on twitter and am an active part of the edublogosphere — I can only speak from my perspective and observations , however from the many edublogs that I follow around the world I do believe the edublogosphere is mischaracterized by these comments. Many in the edublogging community are international as well and will not care as much about North American issues.

I will again agree that perhaps the edublogging community is not as heterogeneous as it should be and that many are not blogging who should be. I am not defending the current state of American public education because in my own county, the public system is one of the worst in the country. I do believe that there are many of us in the edublogging community who work very hard to improve and share best practices and twitter is just one way that we connect.

On another observation,this may also be a function of your own blogroll as it differs to mine — I think you and I only have about 5-6 blogs in common that we both read, I wonder if that is also a difference in our perspectives?

By: Brian Crosby

Brian Crosby — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:49:06 +0000

Matthew – I doubt that the problems you cite would have been solved this summer except that some edubloggers are experimenting with Twitter. I don’t get the whole Second Life thing, but I also haven’t tried it. If some say they see some possibilities with Second Life in education I say let them try – isn’t that innovation? I don’t think they should just experiment with 2nd Life or Twitter or any application. But if a trained, experienced teacher sees an innovative way to use these tools that they have thought through and planned profesionally – then I say go for it.
If you haven’t built a group that you Twitter with, then you should try it out. Its a great way to ask qustions and get answers or share what’s working or not – and so far I can only think of ways to use Twitter with my fifth graders that probably aren’t compelling enough to make me even try it – but it is another possible tool in my bag of tricks that because I am familiar with it I could decide to use in the future if I see a use.
As for Flickr … give me a break. My students used it fairly often this year. We went on a field trips and students took digital photos (during classroom activities too) that we put on our class Flickr page – now students have easy access to all our photos – we used them to quickly and easily illustrate poems, informative paragraphs and more. Students were very motivated to write. Students learned basic computer skills – importing a photo into a word doc and then sizing it and writing and editing their writing – peer editing each others – like blogging – we posted their work in the classroom – always got comments from visitors, parents. Students could share their photos with family that had internet access. There are tons of uses for Flickr. When I do teacher trainings, Flickr is always one of the most popular things I show teachers how to use. Check out FD’s Flickr tools sometime – although you don’t have to use photos from Flickr to use Flickr tools. Hope that helps change your mind.
Brian

By: Alan Levine

Alan Levine — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:46:14 +0000

This is not educational:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14574987@N00/241343007/

This would never interest anyone in perhaps reading:
http://twitter.com/TwitterLit

These kids wasted a bunch of time online:
http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/

There are no reasons to post pictures online:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjagbayani/sets/895629/

Why would anyone share a personal detail on the net?
http://www.storymapping.org/thirdward.html

Sharing pictures never accomplished anything:
http://flickr.com/groups/savephotography/

Now this is a totally worthless waste of time, give me back my chalk:
http://www.googlelittrips.org/

Why go online when we have a 1999 map of the world on the wall?
http://www.commoncensus.org/

The web is full of sites that add now value:
http://www.language-exchanges.org/

By: Biff Cantrell

Biff Cantrell — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:10:30 +0000

Geez, it’s nice to see the Flat Earth Society is still active.

I am sure such sweeping generalizations are informed from your own published exhasutive analysis of what every educator has been doing with web technology tools.

By: Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:36:30 +0000

Yes, the edublogosphere is connecting via twitter, however, you will see that most of us use twitter to indeed share the most important things (while of course some share more inane things.)

The bottom line is that it is connecting us and while you may look at it and immediately jump in and criticize, if you look at the other things that those connecting through twitter are doing, you’ll see projects like that of Julie Lindsay and I which are included in Thomas Friedman’s upcoming update to the World is Flat on educational activism. We connected five classrooms in Bangladesh, Austria, Australia, China, and my classroom in Georgia USA to study the trends in IT and actually have a meaningful project.

Do I twitter, yes! But I also am working on a project, connecting with other teachers, and although I am a private school teacher, doing my very best to find a public school to connect with the kinds of global projects that need to happen in America’s typically ethnocentric education system.

My zeal is for effective meaningful, engaging education and sharing the best practices that I am using in my classroom which happens to be a technology classroom, I am however, working with english, math, and other classrooms.

I too am alarmed about many of the issues in education and am doing my part — but to single out what is happening with Twitter is again making educators who are often islands of excellence retreat and be disconnected.

Most teachers quit within the first three years because they feel isolated and alone and if twitter gives them a connection with others who are struggling through the system like them then bring it on.

I’m sorry that those who just take a cursory look seem to jump to conclusions and lump everyone together — if you look at most, there are very few who spend “all day” twittering — it is just not so.