Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools, Chapter 1

I feel like I am blundering ahead blindly without really following all the directions. I went back and read the Syllabus more carefully and discovered that I am to blog on the textbook readings, also. I read chapter 1 before I even started the lessons, so I will cover my tracks and blog my thoughts on it before I continue.

We are definitely in a different world today than we were when I was in high school and things are changing at such a rapid rate that it is dizzying (if that is a word). The strange thing to me is that in a world where information is so available and kids are so wired, most of them are not very well informed on what is going on around the world. Kids are obviously using technology for things other than news and politics. I suspect that the social aspect of the web is where most of the action is for the millenium generation. Almost a hundred percent of students in high school now carry cell phones and text whenever they think they aren't being observed. Most also have Ipods, although Iphones are rapidly replacing the latter. With the Iphones they can surf the web, text, visit Facebook, and email, as well as talk on the phone.

Students are way ahead of adults, staff included, in their comfort with technology of this type. They have grown up with it and are as easy with it as we are with newspapers and TV. Schools are not up there with them. At NPHS students are not allowed to visit social networking sites, email except for school business, use cell phones, connect their personal laptops to the internet, or use instant messaging. That is supposed to be true in all the schools in the District, but I don't know if all enforce the code. Some teachers have gotten permission to use online chat to connect their students to other classes or cultures--for instance the Spanish teacher has her more advanced classes talking Spanish to a class in Argentina. Several of the teachers have class blogs and the District has enabled their site to be opened in school, thought the filter disallows other social networking sites.

I agree with the authors that the three skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic are not adequate measures of successful education in the 21st century. Things like global awareness, information gathering and manipulation, and just plain technology savvy are fast becoming the primary items that we as schools are going to have to ensure our students have when they graduate. Our exit exams and other measures of fitness for graduation have to be replaced with something more emcompassing and rigorous.

As I mentioned earlier, students are very comfortable with the use of the various technologies, but don't really know the wisest uses. They are very clumsy information seekers; they lack skills in searching the Web, know very little about website evaluation, and think that cutting and pasting is how you use information instead of synthesizing it into their ideas and words. These are all things that need to be taught in regular classrooms and not just as library orientation blurbs. They are complex and necessary skills that they will need throughout their lifetimes.

It is an exciting time to be in education and I just hope we, as teachers and librarians, can rise to the occasion so that we don't leave a generation groping for skills that we should have been able to impart.