My point was that these people – the school boards – are largely oblivious to tools like Moodle and to projections like those presented in DYK2. The kind of scorn heaped on their heads from this group we commonly call “School 2.0,” if it should be a part of the conversation at all, belongs at the end of the line, not wherever it’s currently inserted.

Oddly enough, our superintendent’s son actually works for Moodle (I think–it’s not Google, but it’s something with that sound combination) AND I was one of several lucky unblemished sacrificial heifers (there were seven measures of pure meal, and some olive oil and incense) chosen to present, at our end-of-the-year staff development ritual, the DYK thing. And yet our tech department still won’t punch a hole in the filter so my students can use Clay’s AP Lit Ning.

Which would actually be better than what seems typical, asking them to read your slides while you paraphrase them. Yeegh.

I’m inclined to disagree, though, on the evidence of nearly any post complaining about a) a school’s reluctance to drop Internet filtering, b) a school’s reluctance to implement 21st-century technology, which, with scant exception, paint these schools as lumbering, stupid creatures and their boards as intractable foes.

My point was that these people – the school boards – are largely oblivious to tools like Moodle and to projections like those presented in DYK2. The kind of scorn heaped on their heads from this group we commonly call “School 2.0,” if it should be a part of the conversation at all, belongs at the end of the line, not wherever it’s currently inserted.

On the off chance you’re right, though, that these bloggers exist only in my head and not all over my reader, all over Ning, I’ve resolved to cut back the “shin-kicking” (as our erstwhile blogging colleague Christian Long put the same behavior you’re talking about) significantly.

Liza, it’s outlying folks like yourself who force me to push past my shtick and actually present. Thanks?

Diana, nice work. That’s a solid return-on-investment there.

-How old are you?
-Is your mother proud?
-Why can’t my son be more like you?
-How old are you again?
-Will you talk to my son?

After providing the information (23, sometimes, it’s probably for the best anyway, 23, no way), they launched into strange exclamations of weirdness:

-Just so young!
-Kids must love you!
-Wow!

We never did the task.

At that point, I’d been a teacher for five months; I went home and started looking at potential grad schools.

At this point in the presentation, I cringed inwardly, recalling how many bloggers have seized that same juxtaposition for ironic, self-congratulatory purposes. Realizing I was dealing with an audience that was largely oblivious to alternative tools and settings for education, I settled on a more modest approach.

Right on. Lord knows we hate self-congratulatory anything. Especially when we’re making comparisons between the old way and the new way. Let’s avoid that!

I said I was disappointed in myself, that as much as I enjoyed my job, I felt like an agent of a system I knew was hurting kids. I told them that in that picture the students have been trained to believe that math learning happens for one hour daily, between two bells, and that learning with a capital-L happens only during school hours.

Yeah, about that.

Dan, you’re absolutely right, the way I see it, but the more you try to distance/alienate yourself from the strawman you’ve set up (the self-congratulatory School 2.0 types), the more obvious it is that you’re (gasp; minor chord) ONE OF THEM. If the difference between you and them is that you blatantly apologize and they present themselves as saviours, fine, but that’s not enough of a difference. It’s just a matter of tone, not substance.

This presentation is awesome, though, and yet another example of your inspiring graphic work, and I’ve bookmarked the entry for reference for when, inevitably, I’ll have to take on a similar task. Thanks for it.