Reflection on 5th Reading Assignment

What It All Means – Chapter 10

            I reviewed submissions to professional scientific journals for a lot of years, and I professionally edited research papers for 4 years.  One of my concerns about some writings such as Richardson’s little book is that authors start with a bang and burn out toward the end.  I think that Richardson did too based on the brevity of Chapter 10.  I believe that some of his “Big Shifts” are not really big shifts.  For example, “Teaching is Conversation, not lecture” is the way good teaching has always been and the I had nothing to do with it.  Maybe he never heard of scientific letters, edited publications and responses from readers that were published.  What the I has provided is a forum for unedited thinking similar to prepublication.  People can now be more flippant, less precise and more prone to make technical and language mistakes.  For example, people are not that’s; they are whos.  Horton learned that from Seuss, for goodness sake.

I do believe that the I is a potentially good place to collaborate, that it is a real equalizer and that it certainly is a freedom fighter as we have recently seen in North Africa.  Hopefully, we will also be able to use it to rid ourselves of our repressive government.

I am neither advocating violent revolution, nor am I advocating the Chevy Revolution.

See, it allows people to be flippant too.

I consider many issues that Richardson did not write about.  Why is his book not an online resource if he thinks so much of technology?  What about that?  Also, a printed refereed, professional journal has a defined audience.  Who is the audience for your web page?  In class it’s students, but there is no known level of probability that anyone will ever read your blog.  It might be better to publish videos to YouTube, Vimeo or some other place with a following.  If we teach students to publish to the web and nobody reads their stuff or if those who read it post bullying comments, will students commit suicide.  That might be extreme.  What if somebody posts hurtful comments and this causes students to never write and share again?  I know a professor who would not publish because he was hurt by editorial criticisms the fiorst time he submitted a manuscript.  Think about how youger, sensitive students might react.  We have to protect them from that and teach them to accept constructive critisms for what they are.

I am not trying to be dark today but Richardson reminds me of me.  He has been so positive in his promotion of technology, that he has ignored the potential evils.  He should really think more about those aspects if only to be fair.  He could do his own SWOT.

Anyway, I just agreed to do the bad kids at A-F HS for at least the next 2 weeks on M, W, and F.  I don’t know why I agreed..  Their regular teacher (a veteran of many years) left with an emotional breakdown because of the way they treated him.  He might not return.  The kids are pissed and started out the same with me.  I had to expel one in first block because he was trying to take over the class and do Issac says games instead of helping me lead the class to something of value.  Over half the class has 3 blocks of the same class.  They don’t even leave the room.  I don’t have the license to take them into the shop which is where they want to be.  And, they are mad about that. I can’t blame them but I don’t like picking up 50 or more paper airplanes and paper ball.  Eventually, I told block 4 that they were not allowed to miss the basket and I (they) used the smart board to learn GoAnimate.  They settled down with that.  The only problem was that they made a racial cartoon or I would have saved and linked it here.  I deleted it instead.

Epilogue – His and Mine

Richardson makes it sound so easy.  The ideas are and maybe all of this is easy for some teachers in some places.  In other places, there is no time to do these things, or teachers lack time management skills.  In other places faculty who send all these notes and ideas to other faculty are likely to be shunned.  In others they will be readily accepted.  Have you ever watched a teacher read e-mails?  Most often this is recreation time and not for business really.  Some teachers lack the technology that others in the same school have.  I like the technology and want to use it all of the time.  I can get away with more than the youngsters because of my age.  It must help me with teachers but I can tell you that in some situations it does not help me with the students.  Sometimes it does.  By combining my age with technology, I just might make things work.