Blogging the Book
Posted by anastasia on 05-12-2006Just back from a 48-hour cross country trek to Virginia where I presented about teens, technology/media and what we're doing at Current TV to a group of newspaper reporters, editors and marketing execs at the American Press Institute. Even though I slept for over 9 hours, I still feel a little tired. Some of you may have noticed I jumped on the blog Wednesday to fill in for Chet (who has been filling in for ME) since he was traveling. I am itching to come back, but have to stay focused for the final stretch of the book. My manuscript is due the second week of July.
How weird is it to write a book where your topic literally is "live," i.e. changing every single day. When I started the process, Xanga was the site to ban from schools. Over the past six months, MySpace became a media phenomenon generating new and different angles on the story as the coverage evolved. Now after replacing Xanga with the dubious honor of the site for schools to ban, Republican legislators are trying to pass legislation that will have MySpace and all social networking sites banned from all public schools and public libraries. So much for the conservative philosphy of less government. (ok that's as political as I'll get here).
This week I've begun my journey into the topic of technology and education, having interviewed two high school teachers and one middle school teacher. Next week I will be interviewing another high school teacher, hopefully a Harvard professor/expert on the issue, and a regular Ypulse reader who happens to have been the director of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education from 2001-2004.
Here's what I've learned so far:
- There is not only a technology gap between students and older teachers, but also between younger ("Millennial") teachers and older teachers. Millennial teachers have a much easier time incorporating technology into teaching, are more willing to take risks with it and are more comfortable letting their students help them figure stuff out. Many older teachers are still terrified of computers and of losing their authority or having it challenged in the classroom by admitting they don't know how to use the technology.
- The digital divide may be affecting some low-income schools but not others. I interviewed a teacher at this middle school in Texas (.pdf), which is a Title I school (meaning half the students are on free or reduced cost lunches). After a $300 million technology bond was passed, they have more and newer technology than the public high school in Mill Valley (located in Marin, the richest county in the country). The problem is that teacher training or staff is usually not included in these types of bonds leaving the divide I mentioned in the first point — younger teachers using it, older teachers afraid to turn it on.
- Cellphones in schools are out of control. Many teachers, especially those afraid of technology, will often look the other way or let students take calls outside if their phone goes off in class. And it's often the student's parents who are calling! The teacher from the Texas middle school, said they now have a policy where they charge the student $15 to get their phone back if it goes off. This came about after students were caught texting answers to tests. I'm closely following what's happening with this issue in NYC.
- Plagiarism and shoddy sourcing of Internet research is rampant. One of the guys at the seminar yesterday said his daughter's teacher limited her to only one source from the Internet for her research paper. I'm all for making students go to the library and find other sources, but shouldn't the focus be on how to verify the validity of Internet sources instead of limiting them?
- Teachers are looking for controlled blogs and email. One company I heard about, Gaggle.net, might be a good lead — check them out.
- I predict…"the death of chalk" followed by "the death of dry erase boards" in schools within five years.
That's pretty much it for now…More to come next week.
