FORCED LABOR
ALSO FORCED
FORCED ALL YEAR LONG
FUN STUFF
ONE SENTENCE LONG FUN
In the beginning, my students loved the idea of blogging. In fact, I remember one student saying, as we set them up, "This is the new facebook!" Fast forward about 100 days and it was no longer the new facebook. Rather, it was pain-in-the-ass homework that was forced.
I feel like a cool-hunter who, once they find what's cool, they also kill it.
Is it possible to use what belongs to youth without killing it? Can we, as teachers-- authority figures--ask students to organically write something--something that is not forced?
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I remember noticing the same thing in evangelical Christian culture in Oklahoma, where I went to high school. The Church (big C) also tried to appropriate anything cool for use as an evangelical tool, and it nearly always made them look silly and took all the fun out of it. I'm convinced that any time we do something "gimmicky" with technology -- because we can, not because we need to or because it expands our learning opportunities -- we do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteYeah-- I know what you mean. It's a fine line to walk: you meet the students on their territory, but then it ceases to be their territory. But what's the alternative? Scantrons? Five-paragraph themes?
ReplyDeleteI need to think more about this (which is, happily, the effect of most of your posts).
I think you raise a good question Amy D., but I do think that the idea of killing what is cool is not a teacher problem but a student one. If using blogging and utubing and multi-media writing in school is killing what is cool, then that is the student's choice. If students perceive that learning is forced, then that is their problem. They can choose not to learn or choose not to do any assignment they want. We don't force them to do the assignments so much as try to motivate them to see their benefit by doing them. They are never forced to do what we ask them to do and we know that behind our assignments there lies a greater good and a benevolent consequence for them: they become smarter people. So, will using cool technology in school kill the cool? It shouldn't, unless the student lets it.
ReplyDeleteAh, Tom! Thank you for reminding me that I don't "Give F's" any more than I make students do their work.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jeff, thank you for the compliment.
Oh, and the first few links aren't broken--you need to click on the title that appears on blogger and then you'll find the student-blog. I'm not sure what I did wrong with those HTML codes??
ReplyDelete