I hope you noticed that I did not say my blog. I have wanted to do a project like this for a while because I have strong feelings and want to share them and be challenged. You see, I don't believe that this blog, or any blog, should be a place with static postings by the author. This blog is for a community of like-minded people who agree that in order for creativity and innovation to be taught and learned, in the context of instructional technology, that we need to challenge and push each other to continue our quest to give our students the best educational experiences that we can. We owe it to our pupils and colleagues to be, as I heard Alan November once say, "...fearless in our teaching." In this day and age of political, economic and societal challenges we need to be innovators to lead and progress in our endeavors to educate our youth.
Instructional technologies need not only be looked upon for what they can do on the surface. We need to leverage the various tools that are at our disposal and use them in unintended and creative ways that serve not only to help educate, but as an example of innovation to our students. Teach your students be "Fearless Students," as well and give them tasks that make them take risks, collaborate and explore. Also, by all means listen to them!!
Please join me to make this blog a community of fearless, innovative, creative and collaborative educators and learners. In fact, don't wait, please comment on this post so we can get the discussion going and come up with more blog posts and collaborations.
Our consortium works with thirty-eight school districts as an online learning community. Some of our schools are moving to 1-to-1 solutions. Some are looking at netbooks and tablets. I have made it a point to visit tablet vendors with one essential question: "Does this tablet have the capacity to do everything a laptop does?" So far the answer in each case has been, "No." Until tablets are more than consumption tools, I think they should not be considered as replacements for laptops or even netbooks. A comprehensive portable tool should be able to enable students to produce as well as to consume. A student should be able to use a tablet to write a comprehensive research paper or lab report with documented references, supplemented by embedded links, supported with other media like PPT presentations, audio files and video clips. I used a netbook as my primary computer for two years. It performed admirably. The tablet is not there yet - not even "almost there."
ReplyDeleteRomeo Marquis, Executive Director
The Learning Curve Consortium