The Kist book brought up some points that I really want to discuss further. I found this chapter to be particularly challenging in an ethical sense. For instance, I have had several co-ops tell me to delete my social media accounts because the kids will use them in inappropriate ways. I also had a co-op whose personal account was hacked by a student afters school, and he spent time changing his password and updating his security settings. Why would I want to encourage this kind of negativity in my classroom? I understand that it can be valuable, but I just don't know if the value is worth the risk and the time I would have to spend monitoring my students outside of class, even if the account wasn't their real identity. It's a great source for networking, but as far as the standards are concerned a pen, paper, and markers would do much the same thing.
In the book, Liz created a curriculum that was "available for students to interact with [...] whenever they want" (101). Problem! Students don't ever want to do work, especially outside of class. In fact, I witnessed what happened when a teacher assigned homework. Less than half the class brought it back to school the next day. If it isn't done in class, then it doesn't get done. So yes, this may work for highly motivated or tech-savvy kids, but for the general population, at least as far as I've observed them, they would receive zeros for anything assigned outside of class. Again, this works in theory and I would love to try it, but it would have to be in a super specific population of students and I just don't know how feasible that would be.
No comments:
Post a Comment