Terry Elliott was there at the beginning of this whole blogs in education movement and his posts were always finely crafted, intelligent and thought provoking. Although I think he stayed the course in terms of using the technology in his classroom, his own blogging habit has been more off than on of late. But today, he commented on an “old” post on this site from almost two years ago that I didn’t want to go unread:
My take on blogs has always been that they blow the doors off institutional frameworks, especially moribund ones. Weblogs are a means to an end; and the end is learning not schooling. The strategic student is always looking for the extrinsic reward–the grade–so he or she will use it to get that grade, dust his hands together, and say, “Well, that’s that.” As long as schools consider weblogs as a just another delivery tool for the same old wine then it won’t matter how shiny, cool and new the bottle is. The best weblogs are their own reward. A few students get that right away, then they ask themselves, “What do I need a teacher for?” I am struggling with the same problem although I think what Dennis is talking about is the institutional difference between high school and higher ed. As David Wiley said recently, paraphrasing here, just because you are a good water polo coach doesn’t mean you do the same thing with horses. Chew on that, grasshopper. ;]
Great stuff, and a nice surprise to hear from one of the early adopters once again…
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