classroomtwooh

I am hooked on the WEB 2.0, learnertwopointo, the whole 2nd run at all that we are and can be doing with technology and ITS (Instructional and Information Technologies) use in our learners world. The potential is huge; the obstacles are too. Teachers time is a big obstacle as is an approaching point of exhaustion with just one more new thing. When I was working in higher ed. I attended one of the first internatonal conferences on Internet2. That was in 1998 or 9 in Austin Texas. We were all about how more bandwidth and lower cost of memory was going to change the face of education. It has and we are all still using mostly Internet1. We block most of it because its gotten pretty rude out there and that is the second obstacle. Many of my teachers have looked around and the first time they see the F or N word they close the browser down and pick up a book. They forget they heard the F and N words out in the hall that day and some of the students themselves were calling the other students on their speech. Some of the students had to face an assitant principal and were disciplined. So the obstacles are mounting but we still see the potential. We see the way the potential lights up the students and motivates them to work. Do we recreate WEB 2 capabilities within our firewalled containers and discipline rule breakers within the cyberschool wall like we do the brick and mortar school grounds? Do we leverage the wheel that is already built in the 'real' world of connected computers and then discipline our students whose contributions are inappropriate or unworthy in some way relevant to our educational goals?

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