A matter of perspective?
Pete Seeger's Oh, Had I
A Golden Thread is an old personal favorite of mine. It encapsulates the best
of folk music, expressing a simple, basic hope and belief in the goodness of humankind.
But when I chose part of that song as an ongoing metaphor for this column, I knew
that it would be hard to view a favorite folk song from at least a generation
ago with the same innocence with which we first heard and sang it.
Oh, had I a golden thread
And needle so fine
I'd weave a magic strand
Of rainbow design
Of rainbow design.
Seeger sings of a
golden thread, but also of a magic strand. As I've admitted, I love magic. Yet
I know full well that there's a trick involved - we don't see everything that's
going on, we're missing part of the action. And so it is with Web 2.0 applications
and their use in educational settings. The blog evangelists seem to be telling
us that simply putting these tools in the hands of pupils is enough to suddenly
make them into writers and researchers. Wiki promoters preach the gospel that
when pupils work on writing a wiki on a certain topic, they'll devote themselves
to constantly editing their work toward better and more trustworthy content.
I've seen more than my fair share of student blogs and wikis, and though
(what, again?) I want to believe, my experience tells me otherwise. I've seen
too many examples of pupil writing that didn't undergo any editorial development
- the first draft was the final draft, and was definitely not something to write
home about. I've seen blogs where the only comments came from educators committed
to the idea of blogging who were recruited to offer some encouragement to the
pupils. On numerous blogs devoted to pupil writing I've gotten the impression
that none of the pupils read any of the postings of their classmates. I've listened
to podcasts that were basically no more than a tape recorder left open for pupils
to say a few words to the world (or their parents) with no apparent preparation
regarding why the medium of a podcast was preferable (or not) to some other medium
in this particular case, be it a newspaper article, a PowerPoint presentation,
a video, or something else.
In all of these cases the common denominators
seemed to be a burning desire to use a "new" technology, and perhaps
a blind belief that by using such a technology the lack of any significant or
worthwhile content might not be glaringly apparent. The promise of a golden thread
turned out to be little more than a magic strand - a strand for which the teacher
apparently forgot the correct incantation to make it work its magic.
Go to: The
joys of detours, or
Go to: Now that's
interesting, or
Go to: Whatever happened to
..., or
Go to: Who needs them?, or
Go to:
A magic strand?