So here’s a bit of a bright spot…teachers are actually coming to me requesting blogspace over the summer. And the core group of users that I had this year are letting me know they don’t want their sites taken down once school ends on Friday. They have plans. This is good news, I think…
One of our Social Studies teachers is doing a month long visit to China for a Fulbright seminar in July and she asked me to set her up with a site where she could chronicle her travels when she gets a chance. And I have two groups of teachers who are interested in using blogs to help their honors students through some required readings over the summer. The Weblogs class is filled with 18 new takers, which means about 75 teachers will have been trained on Manila in the past two years. And things are still inching along with the Website…35 sites created with about half of them converted. Pretty much on schedule for September.
Still, Terry asks a good question with his “How Hard Is It to Convince People to Use Blogs?” post.
I have the beginnings of a vanguard of the blogletariat, but the project members are so busy with presentations that they don’t have time for sharpening the axe.
Same here. Time is the issue. And just plain old lack of understanding. I sat in a administrative meeting today wondering how many of the 20 or so people in the room really understand what’s coming down the pike in terms of web based instruction and publishing and content creation. Not that I fully understand it, but I have to say that while they talked about the need for more AP and honors courses, I was thinking more along the lines of information/technological literacy and environmental stewardship. (Talk about two ends of the spectrum…) I know I have written about this before, but it just slays me that we send kids out of this school with really very little understanding of what it means to be a citizen of the world, much less of this democracy. How to tread lightly. How to make good, informed decisions. But the problem is that few if any of the people in the room get to that either. We’re spoiled, and we have no time.
No idea how this upbeat post turned so sour…