So, I penned an Op-Ed on 'Connected vs Not-Connected Classrooms' and it ran today in The Baltimore Sun... click after the snippet to read the whole thing. And please do share, comment, and help me understand how you think about these things.
A gap will emerge between those schools that can offer the capacity for network building — represented by their own network of connected teachers and administrators — and those that will not make the connection. This is not an issue of public versus private school or wealthy versus impoverished school. Plenty of wealthy schools are deciding not to make the connection, while many teachers in cash-strapped schools are pursuing a real grass-roots effort to make it happen. This is about connected schools versus not-connected schools.Read the whole piece.
I think you're right to point out that as a divide. I teach at a wealthy school in the UK and am finding it hard to get colleagues to connect in ways other than email.
ReplyDeleteMuch of this is down to fear (on the part of the teachers), much of it down to digital semi-literacy (they don't understand what they're missing so they don't know what they're missing) but much too is down to pedagogy. Those teachers with a more open, constructivist approach are far more likely to be curious than those who are more prescriptive. The point being, I think, that it's easy to ignore the pedagogies implicit in the tech.