Confessions of an Old Curmudgeon

The Confessions of an Old Curmudgeon
Looking at Digital Literacy

As I read over what I have written in the following reviews, I admit that I come off as an educational luddite, taking a very dim view of the role of technology, especially those environments now labeled Web 2.0 or Read/Write Web. Much of this is a pose, but much of it stems from a growing sense of irony borne out in my role of technological support for my building, Frederick High School.

I have my nose rubbed in technological mishaps, blunders, and outright disasters on a daily basis. I have been supporting the technological uses of students and teachers in my building for over fifteen years. I am the school’s software jockey for scheduling and grading in our student information management system as well as the go-to guy when teachers cannot print or students cannot open a file. I was one of the first technology trainers in the St. Vrain Valley School District and moved into the library media center in 1997 largely to support our growing integration of technology. My master’s degree is in Educational Technology, and before that, I was an “early adopter” both of the Apple IIe to help produce the school newspaper and of the Apple Macintosh to layout the school yearbook. I’m still pretty proud of the fact that we had the first all digital yearbook in the state of Colorado. I’ve been around this block a few times.

But my teeth are really set on edge by the new wave of educational technology enthusiasts. Maybe it’s an old guy thing, being passed by the younger set crowding into the computer lab. But I don’t think so. At least, I hope not. I still think that the best teachable moments come through human, face-to-face interaction, and some of the best teachers that I know still have trouble with my first technology instruction, “Turn the computer on. If you have trouble with this, see me.” They’re still coming to see me.

I guess I have really strong doubts that technology is changing the nature of education and that students today--the so-called “digital natives”--are substantially different than students earlier in my career, now finishing its 30th year. Larry Cuban (Teachers and Machines) made clear years ago that these claims were made by people like Edison as early as the turn of the 20th century, and the nature of classrooms still hasn’t changed all that much in the meantime. I’ve also watched any number of technology cycles come and go and have gimped along with obsolete equipment until the new, new thing appeared.

I’ve also watched our district technology services grow from a department of two--the district media coordinator and his clerk--to a burgeoning fleet of trucks and technicians that increasingly dictate the nature of educational policy in our district. This is the same district that asked teachers to take a 7.5% pay cut a few years back and now wants to restore those cuts only on the condition that extra days be written into the contract in part so that teachers can learn “Twenty First Century Communication Skills.”

It just seems like a sense of misplaced priorities to me. Let’s use technology; yes. Let’s keep it up to date; yes. But let’s adopt it with a skeptical eye towards what it can do for us, and let’s keep that eye on the prize of helping our students become better human beings who are turned on by the possibilities of ideas through reading, writing, thinking, and conversation. And most of the time, that is going to occur in the live, face-to-face world of the classroom teacher.

I. First off, I take David Warlick to task in my review of his book, Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century.

II. Next, I take a look at the last time the excellent journal, Educational Leadership, devoted an entire issue to educational technology.

III. Then I give a short summary of Jamie McKenzie’s webzine From Now On, admiring the balanced view he has of adopting and using educational technology. I have also posted a podcast version of this summary.

IV. I have put together a few reading lists in various formats:

A. I use the Listmania! feature of Amazon to bring together some of the books that have had the most influenced on my teacher career in “Professional Reading of an Old Curmudgeon.”

B. I’ve tried to keep up with much of the online literature on digital literacy, educational technology and Read/Write Web tools. Originally, I emailed these articles to myself, printed them out, and annotated my printed copies. Recently, I have found a more efficient way to accomplish this with Web 2.0 tools. I’m first made aware of many of the articles through RSS feeds in my Google Reader. Then I bookmark the sites and articles I want to explore with Del.icio.us. When I return to the articles, I use Google Notebook to clip and annotate the passages that strike me. Finally, I share my annotated clips through my digitalnatives site at pbwiki:

• Brown: Growing Up Digital
• Burns: Tools for the Mind
• Carvin: Eszter Hargittai
• Downes: E-Learning 2.0
  
• From Now On
• Google Generation is a Myth
• Hargadon: Web 2.0 is the Future of Education
• Harsanyi: The Amateurs’ Hour
• Hasselbring: Assistive Technologies for Reading
• Johnson: Disillusionment Curve
  
• March: The New WWW: Whatever, Wherever, Whenever
• McComas: Digital Literacy
• McKenzie: Digital Nativism
• McNabb: Navigating the Maze of Hypertext
• Monke: The Overdominance of Computers
• November: The Scourge of Technolust
• O’Reilly: What is Web 2.0?
• Pflaum: A Second Look at the Nature of Technology in the Classroom
• Prensky: Listen to the Natives
• Richardson: The Educator’s Guide to the Read/Write Web
• Sierra: The Asymptomatic Twitter Curve
• St. John: When Information Becomes TMI
• Techno-tweens
• The Long Tail
• Valenza: The Virtual Library
• Warlick: 21st Century Communication Skills
• Warlick: Content as Raw Material
• Wenglinsky: Technology and Achievement: The Bottom Line

C. I started keeping a database of my personal reading a few years back when I was burned out on grad school writing and stopped using my daybook. I have found a way to share that database online through Google Docs, a tool I recommend for teachers to use the Read/Write Web.

D. I have become addicted to audio books and lectures in the past five years and have come to appreciate the value of this medium to expand our knowledge and experience. I began tracking my listening through another database a couple of years ago and share it here. One future technology that I greatly anticipate is the marriage of audio and text technology with the ability to listen, to read, to highlight, and to annotate in one highly portable device. When the iPod, the Kindle reader, and Google Notebook come together, it could signal a real advance in our educational and/or entertainment possibilities. It might even happen in my lifetime.

V. Finally, I look at three ways that Read/Write Web tools can make a difference for classroom teachers now:

A. The first is a way of keeping track of students’ reading through online tools

B. The second is a way of facilitating collaborative online research among students.

C. The last represents a powerful way, I think, to encourage and document active reading techniques through the iGoogle toolbox.