Monday, February 2, 2009

Thing 23 and I am All Done Thank You Very Much

I liked Flickr, Ning, wiki and Delicous, but I will probably only use wiki and maybe flicke. I really believe that just because you experience something, you don’t have to share it with the whole world. Just sayin.
I don’t know about the Life Long Learning thing. I mean I don’t strive to be a life long learner. I just want to keep from being a stick in the mud. Plus, to focus on digital stuff I think is a mistake. When I was working on my MA at Doninguez I presented a proposal to a professor for curriculum for middle school kids to learn how to work on bicycles. She ripped it apart and said I was setting low expectations for African American kids and yada yada yada. This was 1991. I mean what did she expect me to do have them make pac man programs on Apple IIEs. At any rate, I think they have take virtual stuff way too far. These kids could have gotten jobs right away at $20 and hour. Plus remember Orville and Wilbur were bike mechanics. The virtual is based upon the real. Without the real, there would be now virtual. Comuters spread around stuff, but they don’t create much.
I realized this most acutely when I worked in New Orleans. We had more that one computer per student. The kids were reading on the 2nd or 3rd grade level in the 8th grade and we had more than one computer per student. Got that. Plus the kids were angry, antisocial and abused. They didn’t need computers. They needed warm caring human beings to show them to read, do math and teach them how to get along with one another. I kind of agree with Clifford Stoll. Kids do not need computers until high school.
I don’t think much was unexpected. I always approach these things with more than a little bit of skepticism. I am always on guard for slick marketing and info mining. I would never pay for any of the items in the Web 2.0 Except for a wiki for study guides, but then I will see if our tech guy can to this for us.
The format is ok. John Dewey, Learn by doing. I would participate in another discovery program.
ONE WORD: Adequate
ONE SENTENCE: The 23 things were better than watching TV, but far less enjoyable that a walk in the woods.