If is sounds like ramblings, it is, it’s late at night and I’ve a migrain the size of Sydney Cricket Ground…oh the Summer of Cricket, bring it on …

I think the most significant part of this whole post is the end–

“I was in another meeting with some students and a teacher the other day, and the teacher was trying to show the kids about a Ning they’d had set up for a class project. The teacher was all effusive, gushed about the Ning’s “amazing” features and wanting to show the students all the “amazing” things it could do… “Look! You can use it to leave messages for each other!”, she said excitedly. One of the students confided to me later “I can’t believe how worked up she was getting about that Ning… it’s just a blog. It’s like Facebook. Of course we know how to use it.” It reminded me of that wonderful line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, where the people of Earth were considered a bit of a joke for being “so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

I think the danger is that students discredit us, and we don’t provide the leadership in evaluating their products, if we think everything done with a computer is great.

We need to bring the same critical habits of mind as teachers to everything we evaluate.

That being said, and I totally get your point, but I also think all of us apply that statement to things we don’t do with ease but others do easily (I think of things like painting an oil painting or a student swimming in the junior olympics, etc.) I suppose it’s human nature to express amazement when you don’t know how someone gained the skills they did and when you feel far from achieving that ease yourself.

But in relation to technology and to students, you are right that we need to help teachers focus on the evaluation and analysis so that projects lacking substance are still treated accordingly.

Just the other day a teacher was introducing a Ning at a nearby school and was suprised when none of the students were all that excited about it. The students said ‘yeah its like facebook’ I think teacher’s need to realise that to our students technology simply isnt amazing, it just is….

Great Post Chris

Another comment along a similar line is the gratitude for doing a task for a colleague. Often a fellow teacher has asked me to help with a task, which has been completed with a few clicks. Half a dozen thank-yous and a couple of expressions about my great intelligence later, they’re off again happy. My reply is usually something like “I didn’t really do anything – it’s easy. I’ll show you how” but they’re off.

One of the comments above admitted feeling guilty that people feel this way because it has been their job to get people above these basic levels. I also feel this way and understand exactly how they feel. I’ve been trying for years, but in the end, you can spend all your time trying to improve their skills. It’s ‘them’ that needs to want to get better as well. We can teacher them all day, but will they learn it. There’s a two-way street.

I’ve only come to terms with this over the past few months or so. I’m not feeling quite as guilty anymore, but I want to make sure I am still as contagious as possible with this enthusiastic-for-technology virus I have. I just need to be careful that I don’t spend all my time trying to infect those who have been ‘fully immunised’ and focus on the ‘vulnerable’ ones.

Sorry for the rant, and the inevitable spelling and grammatical errors.
Mark