Web 2 Point Whatever
What if you plan a web 2.0 workshop and no one comes? I am volunteering at the Great Computer Challenge, an event hosted by CII and ODU. My role is to provide a diversion for the adults who are here. When I used to coach teams at the competition, I used this time to drink coffee and chat with colleagues. As I sit here in my empty lab, I suppose that is what the coaches and volunteers are doing now.
However, it does make me think about some recent articles and blog posts I have read about whether teachers are ready for 21st century students, skills, teaching, learning…you add the noun. It would be easy for me to sit here and grumble that teachers are disinterested in technology. Of course, I am at a technology event. The teachers here have invested a lot of time and energy working with students to prepare them for this technology-based competition. I could swing wildly in the other direction and conclude that these teachers are already aware and active users of web 2.0 tools. I think, however, it is somewhere in between.
I hear the grumbles all of the time and I even occasionally hear that teachers already know “all this.” I think both types of thinking are faulty. I think we need to not sit in our empty labs wondering where the teachers are but seek them out in their classrooms, the lounge, the parking lot, wherever we have a few minutes. And I think we need to think about our approach. Probably my description should have been less focused on the cool and more how these tools could make lives easier or teaching more efficient and effective. I was thinking on a Saturday morning, “cool” would be more attractive but I am always into checking out what is cool. I need to remember that I am not like all people.
So for now, I am going to leave my empty lab and go seek out some teachers…and maybe some coffee.
March 17th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Yeah, a blog post! I hope that you continue with your blog. I know that you have so much to share.
I think you are right that the adults that came to the challenge probably had more interest in what was going on with their group they brought to the challenge, than in expanding their own skills.
Keep it up!