An interesting pessimistc/optomistic post by Will

Yes, there are more and more examples of teachers and students using these tools in their practice, but the numbers of examples of students on the K-12 level whose learning is being transformed by these technologies is amazingly small, at least to me. I mean really, where are the examples of students blogging?and I mean blogging, not just using blogs?and building global networks of learners? There are some, yes, but not enough to make the case that these tools can work in the current school environment.

Which hits a few nails on the head. I certainly feel that blogging has done my classes some good but I don’t think their learning is going through a major transformation. I am not too worried though. I am not at all sure if any optimism is possible on the other global events Will refers to, but it should be for educational blogging.

First I think the methods to help children blog in the first place, fitting this into the curriculum and the school day, are developing and need to be explored before we build global networks. This will take time (more time). As a class teacher who is starting the fourth year of blogging with children I am still scratching the surface, just starting to move from giving the children an audience to letting them develop a community. I’ve seening this happen more this session than ever before.

Secondly as we slowly integrate blogging and a world wide network of children learning together it will hopefully dovetail nicely with A Curriculum for Excellence, Assessment is for Learning and other educational efforts outside the blogosphere which I think are pushing in the same direction. (Maybe extreme-learning too, but I don’t know much about that).

Thirdly a lot of the edu blogs that have started up over the last year have been professional development blogs not learner blogs. I do not see the sort of changes that I think Will wants until more children are given the tools, hopefully as teachers use the tools themselves they will start giving them to their classes and then as Will says we

will have our kids leading us further toward where we need to go?

I don’t think this will happen in 2007 everywhere, but we already know The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.

I’ve a few ideas of where I want to go in 2007 and hopefully will be planning them here before long.