Banning Student Containers
I just read an article from Alan November’s November Learning site called Banning Student Containers. The premise of the article is that students use “digital containers” – blogs, iPods, instant messanging, YouTube, video games, and of course, cell phones. Students access these containers for information and to stay connected. However, in school students doen’t have access to these containers – in fact, schools tell students these don’t have anything to do with learning. At home the student picks up these tools or applications, moves from one to another – all self-directed, self-taught and highly motivating. At school the student can’t access academic podcasts which would help him learn (such as Grammar Girl and numerous other podcasts geared towards learning). The student can’t post class notes to his teacher’s blog so all RSS subscribers could know what went on in class. The examples continue, but you get the drift.
November argues that students should be allowed to access and use their digital containers at school to make school both more motivating and more rigorous. He makes the statement “what if paper had been banned because at one time a student wrote some inappropriate content without a teacher’s guidance?” (”But what if a student writes something bad in a blog? What will I do?”)
Oh how I wish I could convince more people to make the jump into the wired world. The teachers that embrace the wired world are the movers and shakers. The students that are allowed to connect and collaborate globally are the future leaders. To all the teachers that complain that the students won’t learn – what are you doing to teach the way students will learn? Recently I added a quote I read in ISTE’s Leading and Learning from Lisa Wilson of The Mentoring Center – “If we don’t start teaching the way our kids think and play today, we will continue to keep the entire nation behind in developing the innovative, first-to-market, high-tech tools of tomorrow.” I’ll take it further – if we don’t use these tools we will no longer be teaching, we will simply sound more and more like every adult in a Charlie Brown video.
