Go vote!
Many races are very close. Your vote counts!
I end the weekend with a sense that I might just make it. I got the chunk of papers that I wanted to comment on done. I have more to do, but it seems much more doable now. I got 4 pages written on the *last* dissertation chapter. It will probably all be rewritten, but for now, it’s going to stay. Mr. Geeky did the grocery shopping. This is *huge*. He hates grocery shopping, hates it. He offered; I didn’t even have to ask. So this freed up a couple of hours of my time. Yay. Got some laundry done–most of it, in fact, in between commenting. I did all of this, actually, just today. I took yesterday off completely. I had judge training in the morning, so I figured I’d just write off the day. Mr. Geeky got me hooked on Battlestar Galactica. I know, I’m late to the game, but I didn’t want to commit to another tv show. But we have the first 2(?) seasons on DVD so we can watch whenever we want. That was a nice reward at the end of the day.
Since my dissertation directly addresses teaching and learning with technology, I’m constantly thinking about what the implications are of teaching in news ways. Will Richardson’s post earlier this weekend got me thinking more about what I’m doing and what I think teaching and learning should be. Will expressed some disgruntlement about the fact that people just don’t get it, that the Internet–and specially tools like blogs and wikis and podcasts–are changing the way people learn. Teachers, he thinks, should model what they’re teaching. They should, in essence, learn right along with their students: blog with them, collaborate with them, etc. And I agree with that. I expect my students to contribute as much as I do. I never go into a class with all the answers. I expect, as a class, for us to discover them together. I expect that we’ll explore, together, other issues on our class blog. But I find it hard to convince students that this is an acceptable way to approach teaching. I sometimes think that they expect me to have the answers and while it’s true that I am older and have more years of schooling than they do, they are extremely intelligent people with different points of view, different ways of seeing things, and much that they can bring to the table.
When I’m feeling that students aren’t living up to my expectations, aren’t contributing, aren’t bringing new ideas to the table, I start to get fearful instead of frustrated. And then I often lapse into old methods of teaching, of just talking at them or something. And this has definitely happened over the years and I think that it happens to a lot of people who have good intentions. I think at the college level, when we use new technologies that bring with them new methods of teaching and learning, we’re learning along with our students and we’re often having to convince our students that this is okay, that there is value to this, that, in fact, in may be more valuable.
Alex Reid, puts this a bit more succinctly, suggesting that most people see the point of education as determining who has authority, of imbuing our students with that authority, so that when they go home with their B.A’s, they will be seen as having been filled with knowledge that grants that authority. But, he says, new media and networks disrupt that sense of authority:
The ongoing development of media and networks requires us to keep moving. It doesn’t mean that what we’ve learned has no value; it means that it cannot establish us as authorities. . . . I know public school teachers often cite the limitations of testing requirements as a roadblock to innovation. However I think the limitation is more fundamental than that, closer to their own sense of professional identity. As much as the tests may limit teachers, they also secure them within a defined space of authority.
digital digs: the threat of the network
Teachers and professors are seen as “experts,” as people who have a certain kind of knowledge. If we take that away, if we say that that particular kind of authority no longer qualifies one as an expert, then what do you call yourself. What was all that education for? I would argue, however, that someone with a Ph.D. didn’t just absorb a bunch of facts; they learned how to find facts and analyze them, to question them, to present their questions to others, to find and create new knowledge. It’s not about the content; it’s about the process. And that’s what I try to focus on in most of my classes; it’s what I try to convey when I talk to people about using new technology, about using blogs, wikis, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. to make the process more visible, to help students learn how to learn, how to participate in a broader conversation instead of spitting out information on a test.
If K-12 environments are resistant to change, Alex points out that higher ed might be even worse. At least with public education, there could be a new administration that might enact some kind of sweeping change, but that rarely happens in higher education. However, in both cases, changes from the outside might force people to change. There’s already, as Alex points out, a tension between higher ed and the “outside” world:
I mean the tension between academia and the mainstream culture is heavy enough as it is based strictly on ideological differences. What happens when academics continue to insist on providing an increasingly irrelevant education and charging more and more for the privilege?
digital digs: the threat of the network
I think Will and Alex are both right. There are shifts happening outside of educational institutions that those insitutions seem to be stubbornly ignoring. I think that they ignore them because they’re afraid to learn; they’re afraid to model learning, as Will says, and they teach instead. I understand that feeling. It does feel a little scary to look vulnerable in front of your students, but imagine how much more vulnerable they feel in front of you. I think this is a difficult time to be a teacher. But it’s also an exciting time, if one can embrace some new ways of doing things and have a willingness to learn. Isn’t that why most of us got into this in the first place? Because we enjoy learning?
technorati tags:teaching, learning, technology
For obvious reasons. I am trying to remain calm and take things one step at a time. I have a plan. I think I’m going to be okay, but until things start to fall into place, I’m going to feel frazzled.
- Today, I travel down to our Government Building to get trained in election judging, which is funny, because I used to call our old judge on things he was doing wrong. I also pick up the super secret box with all our election materials. I feel a little like a secret agent. So that blows my morning.
- Mr. Geeky is doing a presentation for parents’ weekend, so he’s dragging the kids with him. We should all be reconvened at the house for lunch.
- We have no food.
- Depending on what my family has planned, I will either work on some student papers or the dissertation. I feel like I need a break, so I’m just going to go with the flow
- Tomorrow is dissertation first, student papers second.
- Monday is a day nearly meeting free. I have a few irons in the fire at work. A lot of irons in the fire, actually.
- On Monday, I need to again work on papers and the dissertation.
- Tuesday is election day. Aside from setting up and the initial rush, I can actually do stuff, so I will. Otherwise, we get bored anyway.
- I can’t think beyond Tuesday. My hope is that progress will have been made by then and I’ll be on top of stuff. If it’s not, I can freak out then.
Update on the Geeky Boy situation: In addition to the morning routine problem, Geeky Boy has also forgotten assignments and projects and stuff. I think these are related issues. I actually called the school’s guidance counselor. She was very nice and basically said that 6th grade is hard on most kids and there’s a lot to get organized. She’s going to meet with him and help him organize his locker and discuss some strategies that might help him.
I had been working on the diss for an hour every morning. This still happens, but only about twice a week. I’ve shifted my work to the evening, which works, but my brain is sometimes a little mushy after a full day at work.
The main reason for the lack of morning work? My children. They’re killing me. For the first month of school, Geeky Boy hopped out of bed at 6, took a shower and got himself ready. But about a month in, the newness had worn off and he was staying up too late, not hearing his alarm go off. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if when I went to wake him up at 6, when I got up, he actually got up. Most of the time he goes back to sleep. And so I have to march upstairs at least once and sometimes two or three times to rouse him. These interruptions are not conducive to focused work, as one might imagine.
I have to admit that I’m a bit angry about this. I remember when I was in middle school. I woke myself up with an alarm clock. My mother used to check to make sure I was awake, which after a while, pissed me off because I could take care of myself, dammit. Part of me thinks that Geeky Boy should be the same way. But here’s the sucky thing. I’ve thought, well, I’ll just wake him once, and if he goes back to sleep, that’s his problem. But it’s not his problem, entirely. It will be looked at as my problem, too. If he’s late to school, the onus is on the parent to provide an excuse. How bad does it look to say, “My son was late because he wouldn’t wake up”? People will be thinking, “Lady, why didn’t you wake him up?” Sigh. This is the trap of parenting. You try to give your kids some independence and rather than doing things for them all the time, you give them greater and greater responsibility, but then you’re up against the parents who do do stuff for their kids and there’s just no comparison. Up until this year, there were always kids whose parents “helped” with their kid’s homework. Kids who did their own homework just couldn’t compete.
I’m also angry, of course, because this is eating into my (very limited) work time. I estimate that I’ve got about 2 weeks of work left before finishing this chapter. Every morning I don’t work adds a day, perhaps, to my time. Gah. It occurs to me that maybe I should just tell Geeky Boy that. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand how his behavior affects those around him. I wouldn’t mind waking him up if I didn’t have something to do. It might bother me a bit, but it wouldn’t make me angry. Helping your kid grow up is hard.
Why does it always seem that everything has to be done at once? Why can’t busy times spread themselves out? I have hit a lovely point where I have papers to comment on (had to ask for an extension from my students), a chapter to write, stuff to read for class, an election to judge, and more. Gah! It will get done, but it’s gonna be a little frantic. And then there will be Thanksgiving and I gorge myself and put myself into a food-induced stupor. I think I’m gonna need that.
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