Learning, Technology and Games

Twitter, Facebook, peers, colleagues, friends, family. We have a bunch of networks we rely on for information, guidance, comfort, etc. This past month I’ve suffered through the flu and then some personal problems as well. In looking back at this time, I found it somewhat interesting, that while I maintained some contact with colleagues, friends and family–I didn’t rely on them much to help deal with my personal problems (which of course isn’t really surprising to me since I’ve always pretty much kept my personal stuff to myself). What was surprising though was that I increased my reliance on my gaming network in World of Warcraft and all but eliminated contact with the personal learning network I have developed mainly through Twitter and some through Facebook.

This is purely my own case and cannot be generalized, but I find that playing with friends is more therapeutic than burying myself in work/learning. Even though I do not know any of my online gaming friends in a context outside the game (perhaps because of this), I found I spent a lot of time playing together with them, especially a select few that just seemed to brighten my day compared to working or playing with anyone else. I’m sure some aspects of this are also related to just escaping my personal problems by playing, but some do this through work as well and I found that I could not do that no matter how hard I tried. Even though I’m starting to get through some of my personal problems, I still find it extremely hard to focus on work and studying/writing. I often tend to fall asleep doing these activities within fifteen minutes.

It would be interesting to explore this further. I know Shirley Turkle has done some work in this regards but would love to find more research on how playing games with friends can be therapeutic. This could be a positive reflection on using gaming networks to build helpful relationships but could as well just reflect poorly on myself for not being able to work diligently through my own personal crisis.

[revised ending, Nov 18, 2009 at 4:10 pm]

(since something is wrong with the blog portion of our Ning this week, I posted CEP416 instructions here on my blog)

A great way to engage your students is to tell them a story. A great way to get students involved in a project is have them tell a story. This weeks workshop makes use of some tools and content you have done already, such as Flickr/Picasa, Creative Commons, ideas from the Presentation week, etc.

Task 1:

Your main assignment is to tell a story using one of the 50 tools Alan Levine talks about in his wiki, 50+ Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story. This can be either a story for a lesson you might introduce or an example of a story project you might have students do (which you might use/revise later to be the other lesson in your final portfolio).

Levine takes you through two main steps before actually telling you to pick a tool to create your story (and this doesn’t have to be an English story but could even be something related math/science projects): 1. how to outline a story, and 2. where to find media (which goes quite a bit beyond our first workshop on images and should be something you bookmark in delicious or wherever you choose to come back to later).

Before deciding on the tool you use, you might want to look at some of the 50 examples he gives of telling the same story with different tools and/or media here: http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/Dominoe+50+Ways

Required Blog Topic:

Write a reflective piece on the story you tell. How might this be useful for your teaching? How might it be useful for your students to do storytelling this way? What did you like/dislike about the specific tool you used?

Lea, M., Spears, R., & De Groot, D. (2001). Knowing me, knowing you: Effects of visual anonymity on self-categorization, stereotyping and attraction in computer-mediated groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 526-537.

What was the research question or what were the research questions?

H1: visual anonymity would lead to greater group attraction

-        anonymity would increase tendency to categorize self in group terms, which in turn should increase group attraction.

H2: Self-categorization should enhance tendency to stereotype others in group terms, which should independently increase group attraction.

Other competing theories hypothesis examined

OH1: Traditional de-individuation and also interdependence models would predict decreased group attraction in anonymous conditions.

OH2: Visual anonymity would increase task focus, which might account for short-term group norms.

Other Questions:

Q1: Would self-categorization increase self-concern compared to group based aspects of identity or decrease focus on self concern–replaced by focus on more group based aspects of identity

Q2: How would larger group categorization affect self-categorization compared to local group self-categorization?

Briefly, why were the researchers asking this question?
Based on prior work in Social Identification and Deindividuation theory (SIDE), it was claimed that deindividuation along with group salience would lead to higher group attraction. The authors want to address the lack of much “evidence that social identity processes mediate the effects of anonymity on groups” (p. 526). They also want to counter traditional theories of group cohesiveness that focus on interdependence and interpersonal attraction. Because SIDE theorists focus on social identity theory: which looks at a process of depersonalized self (“means that perception and behavior become stereotyped in terms of the salient group” (p. 528)) and thus identifies with common group categorization, the authors also want to look at how being part of a larger group such as race or nationality, might influence small groups that are salient of larger group differences.

Briefly, what did they find out?

• Results support authors’ H1 and H2, which together account for a significant amount of variance for group attraction, though separately not as much—supporting idea that H1 and H2 are at least somewhat interdependent. Visual anonymity accounted for 28% variance of group attraction and significantly increased self-categorization. Self-categorization significantly increased stereotyping.
• Results did not support OH1 since anonymous groups had increased attraction
• Anonymous groups did increase task focus as predicted by OH2 but did not increase group attraction—authors therefore suggest SIDE offers better explanation for this effect
• Larger group identity (British nationality) did not significantly affect local group attraction
• Authors were somewhat surprised there was an increase evaluation concern in the anonymous group. However, it did not appear related to self-categorization or group attraction. Authors are unsure of the cause, saying this requires further research.

What was the research design (how did the researchers go about answering the question)?
This was a quantitative study with an experimental design. 56 British female 1st year psych students randomly assigned to one of four groups (visible British, anonymous British, visible German, anonymous German) made of 3 people each, with 1 participant and 2 confederates (same gender, relative age, and nationality)

Variables:

1. anonymous (de-individualized) vs. visible (having silent, grayscale video)
2. German vs British collaborators (confederates, who were all British, but half played German roles)

-German condition made small number of common foreign language grammatical errors

Measures: 4 self-report post questionnaires on 9 pt scale, which assessed local group self-categorization, stereotyping of others, British self- categorization, small group attraction, task focus, evaluation concern.

How appropriate is the design?

The 2X2 design of the study with post treatment measures seems appropriate to test the author’s main hypothesis as well as how large group categorization may affect small group attraction. The measures may be a concern but the questionnaires were not revealed in the article.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the design

This design has very strong internal validity, due to it being a randomly assigned experiment. Because of its short duration, there would be little problems with even imitation, equalization, rivalry or demoralization. One general concern with the use of grayscale, slow fps video for the visible condition is that it may not have been a concern with self and otherness that led to less group attraction and less task focus, but that it was more a novel distraction from task focus which may have also led to less group attraction. In addition, since this is a lab experiment, it may not resemble more real world cases of group attraction in anonymous CMC conditions, since workers, even though not knowing who each other may be in anonymous CMC collaborative environments, might act differently since belong to same company, have more shared goals or knowledge of others in common, etc. (There is poor external validity to the study since the sample population was all female college psychology majors, this may then something indicative of the specific population or it may have been a large group influence that was more salient than nationality—fellow students)

What other designs might have proven useful for their research questions

An experimental, longitudinal design might be useful to determine if SIDE theory persists over time in these types of groupings or if as other theories suggest, group interpersonal dynamics will change over time even in anonymous conditions as individuals find ways to interpret others through verbal cues. A quasi-experimental or non-experimental longitudinal design used in actual real world organizational setting would help see how other covariates typical in the real world might influence group attraction in for the authors conditions.

My CEP416 pre-service Teacher Ed. students blogged in the past week or so about the technology they’ve seen used in their placements. Those not in placements either blogged about past educational experiences with technology or what they have or have not seen of its use in their classes here at MSU.

Flickr photo by sidereal/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A few key themes that appear from their observations:

Negatives:
Many schools do not appear to have the funding for much technology (This probably applies to most of the state of Michigan and possibly many states in the country, not just the Greater Lansing area). Most classes have few computers in the room. What is worse is that what many do have is under utilized. Computers in the class or even labs are often used as freetime rewards when students finish their regular work rather than used for specific educational purposes. Labs when used may have outdated computers and be hard to schedule.

Positives:
Several students saw internet video clips, Smartboards and iClickers used in engaging ways with students. These technologies may provide interactivity without being as costly as several computers. In my opinion, this could be even easier if schools start allowing students to use cellphones with web 2.o software such as PollEveryWhere.

The following is a brief synopsis based of student observations followed with my closing thoughts:

Elementary

Abby had an interesting post on how some elementary teachers have found using a microphone/sound system helps children listen/pay attention better: Microphone systems in the Classroom

Kyle has to go back to memories of third grade to find the best uses of technology in a classroom that he can remember. He points out something that all educators need to keep in mind when trying to integrate technology,

Technology doesn’t have to be a big deal, and the focus shouldn’t even be on the technology.  Instead, we should focus on the content, and the technology will hopefully make the learning process better.

Unfortunately I think Holly has a good perception of how many schools use technology:

Either way, the only technology that was used in the classroom consisted of: TV and one computer. The TV however was only used to show the time, and for morning announcements. The computer was open more for students to use for math games, literacy games, and research. There were also tape players that I believe would be used for books on tape but I never saw them in use.

I feel like this could be a very accurate description of what occurs at the “average” school. Unfortunately i think this is doing the students a disservice. It is well known that most kids love technology and using new technology. My bet is that the majority of boys will tell you their favorite thing to do is play video games. I think it would be great to be able to incorporate this into the curriculum in some way.

Emily writes a very similar observation as Holly’s from her view of Technology Integration in an elementary classroom.

Another Emily writes of her Negative technology experience in placement, where lab time, on outdated computers, is spent often as freetime on the computer rather than as a learning experience.

Giuliana as well writes that most schools she’s been in have lacked technology in the class and . . .

if they wanted to use technology at all the students had to go down the hall to the computer lab. The only problem with that was that the school only had one computer lab and everyone in the school wanted or needed to use it! Besides computers the only other technology in the classroom was an overhead projector. The teacher seemed to only use it to show instructions for the day.

Katie found Smartboards an interesting addition in an elementary school in North Carolina: Technology Integration

Lauren found a teacher here in the Greater Lansing Area that made good us of the Smartboard in her room.

Middle and High School

Candice had a similar view as Holly’s from her middle school placement writing that the school:

. . . had about three computers in each classroom and the students were allowed to use them only when they were done with the work for that hour, or if the assignment involved typing or searching information. The students (at least when I was there) were not given a lot of instruction on what to do on the computer or how to do things . . . .

Erin has a good post contrasting an elementary school’s minimal use of technology with a middle school special ed resource center which made very effective use of technology in Technology Integration

College

Breanne did not much use of technology in the Lansing elementary school where she helped out, but did find her Astronomy course at MSU to make good use of technology, from iClickers to YouTube: Technology Integration.

Jamie has a similarly positive experience in her JRN 108 class, where the professor integrates use of slides, YouTube and iClickers to provide an interactive, engaging classroom.

Stephanie writes as well about the benefits of iClickers to engage students in feedback and also its benefits for tracking attendance in a college course last semester.

General

Amy liked the use of Elmos to project readings from children’s books in Technological Integration in Schools

Jenna discussed how she found it surprising how handy technology could be for keeping children in touch with parents while teaching at a summer camp: Technology: A Help or a Hindrance

A couple students have talked about the use of technology at Michigan State University’s 4-H Children’s Garden. They have a smartboard set up for visiting teachers to use with their students, a virtual tour, a wiki, etc. all to help engage visitors to the site.

Some closing thoughts:

While many of us who have taught in the classroom recently know the problems facing schools integrating technology in the classroom, I think often in the College Ed departments, pre-service students don’t receive a realistic picture of what they will probably face when they’re out teaching on their own. Many may see their few placements as having been exceptions, but that in general things are good in the k-12 public education realm. I’d say on the otherhand the exceptions are the really good schools, with really good community and financial support, and with plenty of technology. (I’m not saying there are not plenty of good teachers; there are! But they are spread out too thinly with too few good school systems and strong educational leaders.) And the problem of school filtering/banning of technology hasn’t even been touched (See this recent post by for a good take on that).

My reason for pointing out these negatives is that hopefully by sharing perspectives, preservice teachers will not be turned off by struggles they face but instead be prepared to try to answering some tough questions: How can we improve going forward? How can we foster learning and integrate technology to engage students entering this digital world on strained financial budgets?

Highlights from slides of Allan Collins talk at MSU based on the book:

Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology
by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson

First off described some individual stories or cases from the book. Examples of students who have done things on their own with help of tech. Creating expertise early on with help of tech and independence. Then much of this was based on the possibilities of all children have a laptop or handheld computing.

Incompatibilities between schooling and tech

• uniform learning vs customization
• teacher as expert vs diverse sources
• standardized assessment vs specialization
• knowledge in head vs reliance on resources
• coverage vs knowledge explosion
• learning by absorption vs learning by doing
• just-in-case learning vs just-in-time learning

Result of the incompatibilities

• school will become less important as a venue for education
• the seeds of a new system are emerging
• industrial revolution -> Universal schooling
• knowledge revolution -> Lifelong learning

Seeds of a new system

• home schooling
• workplace learning
• distance education
• adult educationlearning centerseducational television and videos
• computer-based learning environments
• web communities
• technical certifications
• internet cafes

Comparison of the three eras

• responsibility: parents -> state -> individual
• content: practical skills/literacy 0> basic skills/disciplines -> learning to learn/generic skills
• pedagogy: apprenticeship->didacticism->interaction
• assessment: observation->testing->embedded
• Location: home->schoool->wherever you are
• culture: adult->peer->mixed
• relationships: personal bonds->authority figures->computer-mediated interaction

What is lost and what is gained:
losses: equity, citizenship, social cohesion, diversity, commercialism, isolation, broader horizons
gains: more engagement, less competition, customization, more responsibility, less peer culture

Where do we go from here?

• state of flux: time when visionaries can hae impact
• impertives of technology: customization, interaction, learner-control
• specialized certifications
• rethinking high school
• possible solution: pay for high school ed whenever ready, where/how they want. Keeping in prison not good solution

Rethinking motivation

• current system does not foster intrinsic motivation
• rethinking what is important to learn:
• tech changes what is needed:
• new lit: web, multimedia, negotiation, cultural sensitivity
• math: reasoning rather than computation
• less memorization, more finding needed information
• new habits of mind: what is their viewpoint? how reliable is the source? are there alternatives?

Conclusion:

• In the apprenticeship era, education was personal, resource intensive, and engaging
• In schooling era, education was mass oriented, efficient, and bureaucratic
• In lifelong-learning era, education is becoming customized, highly interactive, and learner-controlled

My own thoughts were that this was standard fair–not much new here but perhaps  its being done by a highly regarded cognitive psychologist and another in Ed Leadership, more educators and policy makers will take notice and start acting.

Also, concerned about their take on technological communication being an impoverished system compared to f2f and citing one Carnegie Mellon study saying it leads to isolation and increased depression. Plus, some offhand talk about not having good solid strong friendships, etc. Its a controversial study, and Dimitri Williams has a study or two that refutes this notion. It also seems to ignore a lot of CMC and social media research that talks about techs community building side. Ignores fact that we never have had many strong friendships and most of has have a wide variety of ties/friendships from weak to strong in different contexts and domains.

One final thought that was interesting during discussion, was a suggestion by Allan Collins for the government to pay for H.S. equivalent education whenever student ready, where/how they want; that we need to get away from forced schooling/prison which is just not good solution for so many high school age students.

Just wanted to let others know that MSU will be hosting its 2009 Technology Conference on November 14th. There appears to be several good sessions to attend, (shameless plug) including one by me on Twitter for Educators. Many of the sessions focus on blogging , wikis, and smartboards this year. There will also be several hands on workshops. These are on a limited seating capacity so sign up early!

The conference is hosted by MSU’s Center for Teaching and Technology. The main conference page is here: http://ctt.educ.msu.edu/2009-educational-technology-conference/

Photo by smannion on Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Three students in my CEP416: Teaching and Learning with Technology course, cross blogged about their take on professors allowing/students using laptops in the classroom. Lauren’s Laptops Allowed yay or nay? started it off, followed by Darci’s Post in Response, and then Stephanie’s Laptop Lecture. All three have different takes with some different comments from other students on the issue.

Following my theme of flopping from polar points of view, I have to go with the moderate opinion here. While I understand that laptops and cellphones, etc. can be a distraction, I’ve also come to realize that we don’t really teach students how to use technology appropriately or even more importantly, how to pay attention. Public k-12 schools, for the most part, ban technology from the classroom and filter the internet so much that students don’t have much freedom to explore or learn how to manage the internet in all its chaotic glory.

As one commenter suggested, banning wireless in a classroom is treating students like infants. Let alone, just banning the technology in the classroom doesn’t seem to be a success. Why don’t we teach students how, when and why to use technology? In all the classes I take as a graduate, I use my laptop whenever possible. To take notes, to following readings in pdf format where the article is searchable, markable, can be bookmarked, have notes, etc. and all be kept in one neat, organized place instead of in multiple folders, books, etc.

Are there times when I should not be looking at or typing in my laptop, yes! In discussions, group work, hand-on activities, etc. if they don’t require resources on my laptop. But during lectures and reviews of reading, I can use the laptop as mentioned above and also to look up further readings or people we’re discussing on the internet, in wikipedia etc. Should I be on Faceboook, probably not, but as I commented on one of the blogs above:

I actually was in a class I’m taking for my PhD the other night and went on to FB to find a link I posted that went with class discussion but a friend in the class gave me crap about it (in a fun way), so this is really a relevant question!

In this case, the link I had shared with friends earlier in the week on Facebook fit with the discussion we were having in class and proved useful.

So we should have conversations with students at the beginning of a semester about appropriate and inappropriate uses of technology. May we have to come back to this discussion, probably. We should point out that playing on facebook or off task internet media sites during class, may not hurt their individual concentration (though some recent research suggests that even the “digital generation” is really not that good at multi-tasking), but it may affect someone near-by’s ability to concentrate. Attention management is something that really needs to be taught more and to me that seems the answer more so than banning laptops or wireless in the classroom. This is something Howard Rheingold has really been emphasizing (a good article here: Mindful Infotention: Dashboards, Radars, Filters) and I wholeheartedly agree.

I’d love to hear other thoughts on this either here or in reply to some of the student’s posts above.

Flickr photo by wonderlane/ CC BY 2.0

I and others will continue to wrestle with this beast. What is the blog beast? As the great bard said, “therein lies the rub!” (You can view some of the related posts noted down below to see my wrestling with this beast or go to the Reflections on Blogging category itself–a clear indicator I think about blogging probably too much!)

As we often do when sharing with others, whether it be formal teaching or just sharing useful information, we humans tend to generalize and some of us (raising hand) do it more than others. The blogging beast can mean many things depending on the individual, the context its being used for, and how its adopted or appropriated by the user for his/her task. One person can use a blog several different ways depending on the context, let alone how many different people use it.

So here’s how I’ve used it or imagined its use :

1. I have used a blog as a journal. Plain simple reflections for myself and like I have done most often in any attempt to journal, its fizzled, but this doesn’t mean its not a good tool for others to journal in. It has some nice features for archiving, categorizing and going back to search through past journal entries.
2. I have also used a blog to think through topics, wrestling with ideas like today’s on blogs, in order to better understand my own thinking.
3. In addition, I have tried to make more public blog entries, trying to engage readers. This is often the more romanticized and perhaps widely viewed notion of what blogs are: a medium for writing articles and starting discussions so that we become public bloggers, perhaps one day being like celebrity wag Perez Hilton, edtech guru Will Richardson, or generating something like the Huffington post. This type of blogging, has definitely had some nice success stories, but most bloggers never get the amount of followers I think they imagine. So often they get frustrated that they don’t have an audience (for more on this see note on #3 at end).
4. I have students in one of my classes using it as a combination of reflective journal and place to discuss ideas raised around the class concepts and tools. We’ll see how this goes :)
5. I am starting to use it some to communicate with my students. This post is with them primarily in mind (perhaps a captive audience to substitute for #3?–I hope not).
6. I have also used a blog in the past as my daily homework bulletin board for students and family when I taught sixth grade. This was my most successful use of a blog. It provided a great, simple way for class assignments to get posted daily and then categorized/archived if anyone missed anything. This worked best in the year I had a directed study at end of day with my students so could have one student post homework each day and share 1 thing they learned in school that day as well. http://casperson.blogspot.com/
7. Some use it to post a daily status update or perhaps post photos/art of the day with a few comments.

I’m sure there are many more but that gives you an idea of the possibilities. So if you feel blogging is not for you off the bat, give it some time and really try different ways of using it.

If you would like others to read and/or respond to your blog (but not necessarily striving to be like #3 above), there are a few things that will help: Include Links to other blog posts (others or your own); Use Paragraphs and Spacing (makes it easier to read); Proofread (doesn’t have to be perfect but try a quick reread to make sure its readable but don’t freeze your writing worrying this is read by thousands); Images (a quick, appropriate visual often helps grab attention); and finally, if you haven’t, read Dean Shareski’s post: Student and Teacher Blogging that Succeeds

#3. Returning to continue my discussion of item 3 above: If you’d like to generate and maintain an audience for your blog as indicated in #3, first start with the idea in mind that you may or may not generate an audience, and that its really a longshot to become a famous blogger but also realize many bloggers have a sizeable audience of anywhere between 10 and 100 readers, which is way more than most people ever have. Next, realize it will take time. You will probably write several posts before you get comments and once you do, that doesn’t mean they will be repeat visitors. Also, you need to keep at it regularly if you expect others to comeback. In addition, to really get an audience, you need to share your blog with others, that means posting a link to it on your Facebook page and/or out on Twitter.

A Request:
I’d appreciate anyone’s comments on their own take on blogs or would love to see links to good examples of different way’s blogs have been put to good use.

I’m listing here some posts by students that represent what a blog could look like.
(note to students, to use a link to a specific post, click on the title of that post to go it’s own page then copy the url or right click on the title and select copy url or copy link option)

“Weeding through the bad stuff to find the gems” good post by Diedra on sifting through internet.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club by Rachel, nice overall mix of blogging uses/styles

Stephanie’s Techknowledgy, topic focused blog (so far ;), has nice posts on delicious, iGoogle, etc.

“Mashable: What is the Future of Teaching?”, nice reflection on a technology and teaching article by Kyle

“Laptops Allowed yay or nay?”, a good discussion starting post on using laptops in the classroom by Lauren. (For those in my class, Darcie and Stephanie have also posted on this topic, so you might want to post a comment under one or all of their entries or perhaps write your own post as a reply and include the link in their comments section.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/ | CC BY-SA 2.0

A student of mine, Darcie, recently wrote about quitting Facebook. This has me thinking about how we often respond when people either choose not to use a tool or medium we love, or later give it up after using it. We often consider this as something that person is going to miss out on.

My first thought was to comment to her about the possible ways she might be able to use it without feeling some of that high schoolish feeling many of us have. (In fact I wrote a piece in a class around January on how high school dance-like it felt.) After recalling how I felt and then also seeing how hard some Twitter edtechies are pushing Twitter use for teachers. I wonder in general about our stance on these technologies. Sure they are great tools for broadening one’s social outlook and connecting with a broader Personal Learning Network. But there are tradeoffs being tied to technology such as this as well.

We become more dependent on them; they add another thing we have to juggle in our busy lives; and more importantly, unless managed well, definitely replace other things we used to do, or do more of, that “we’re missing out on.” We could also be advocating being out in nature more–a better connectedness to nature, might solve some of our ecological problems. Volunteering more to help the poor or homeless would help us understand more of the issues facing our students who live in such conditions. Being more physically active not only could improve many teachers physical health but also emotional/mental health. We could also advocating going out more with friends, physical social contact with friends can greatly help our emotional well being.

Too often we want our children and (as teachers) students to value what we value. More information than we can handle has been around for a long time. Propaganda and other misleading texts have been around a long time. We do need skills to help us think critically. Yes the world is a lot more digital now. Yes students should be aware of how to manage it, cope with it, and benefit from it. As edtechies we’re often futurists saying students will need this in 5 or 10 years. Most of us are also optimists, but what happens when in 5 to 10 years, things go down hill. There are futurists that predict our country will have more problems. What if things go drastically down hill. Power supplies and networks get cut off–the grid gets broken? Should we also be preparing our students for that. Or do we just ignore what might happen and go with our hopes?

(Kinda lost where I was going here; I’m not sure how this turned so dark at the end, but leaving it for now until I have more time to think about this or someone slaps me upside the head with some good comments/criticisms here)

Photo CC by Scott McLeod

Scott McLeod’s post, We trust you with the children but not the Internet-from which comes the above picture, got me ranting to myself again this morning so thought I’d write it up to hopefully get it off my mind temporarily to finish some required work.

Over the past couple years there seems to be more and more about how difficult it is to change the educational system. One of the best posts I saw on this was this summer by Jon Becker: School Leadership and Educational Governance: On Silos and Onions.

As some of us educators and some in the public sector realize we need to shift our schools into the present century before they become completely irrelevant except as day care centers, it seems we’re faced by resistance on all sides.

There’s authors’ condemning the digital culture of today’s youth with little data or no data as Punya Mishra points out in Technology & Literacy, bemoaning the youth of today :-). Some parents who are either on the “back to basics” or “it was good enough for me” meme instead of embracing their childrens’ world and its new media and learning skills.

What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them? — Plato, 4th Century BC (pulled from Punya’s post mentioned above)

Then we are fighting administrators who–even though according to the recent CoSN Leadership for Web 2.0 in Education: Promise and Reality Report see value in web 2.0 tools for education–filter or block almost every attempt to use these tools in school.

Not only do we fight on these fronts, we fight fellow teachers who are resistant to change for one reason or another as mentioned above, or its too much work or just plain inertia.

If we are to effect the change we think is so beneficial on a scale beyond that of a few lone districts spearheaded by a few excellent administrators and teachers, we need to find some way to bridge the gaps between the various agents in education as Jon mentions–until then, we will just be scattered points of light in the vast reaches of dark space.