Just a short post between planes. Yesterday’s blog workshop in Savannah was too much fun for me. I had a group of 18 e-learning types from colleges around the country and they made the day a real conversation about the technologies rather than your typical old training session. We tried to answer the question “Does the Web change everything when it comes to education?” We learned and made blogs and wikis, created Bloglines accounts and started aggregating, and took a look at del.icio.us and Flickr, capped it off with a Skype call to England (which is where I’m at as I write this, having just arrived after a long flight from Atlanta.) Everything just seemed to flow really well from one tool to the next, one question or comment to the next. So there are a few more edbloggers in our midst.
But while the tools are certainly disruptive and potentially powerful, few if any of them really think things in education are going to change anytime soon.
Sadly, they are probably right about that last point. American education is a large, well-entrenched system that has been impervious to major change since I started teaching. Remember A Nation at Risk? I was naieve enough at the time to think it would force some major alterations.
However, I’m optimistic enough to think that blogs and wikis and the rest are disruptive enough to gradually foster changes from the inside (instead of being imposed from the outside as are most education “reforms”). Think of them as tools in a guerrilla war. 🙂
As a participant in the workshop- I just want to say thanks. I do plan to do something productive right away with all of the information I gained in the workshop in developing an online professional development course for teachers highlighting the powerful potential uses of these tools. I think the change in education will slowly come about as more and more teachers become aware of these tools and are guided in strategies for their meaningful integration. Thanks again!