So today brought a new crop of students. I get different kids each day since my class is done on an A/B schedule. So I had yesterday to go crazy, and today to fix it. What I ended up doing is what is listed towards the end of the previous post, I had to register them for all threes sites myself.
I am finding my kids not as tech-saavy as I thought.
Neither are the parents, for the most part, but boy do they love it. Last night was open house…
So I end up with a packed house for open house, and it was standing room only for a couple of classes. My kids had talked up my class and the technological level of things so much that their parents percolated to a point of curiosity to come and see what the buzz was all about.
I showed them computers that were headed for the surplus warehouse to be sold for pennies that are refurbished and running Edubuntu. I showed them the Drupal blog site, I showed them my php Nuke sites, and I wowed them with educational jargon about my pedagogical principles. Ok, maybe not so much of the latter.
What I did do was hit the nerve of what these parents want for their kids. I was expecting to meet tough resistance to my little revolution, and in fact I met overwhelming support. I was approached towards the end of the evening by a powerful woman in my school, the president of the PTO, and she said “My daughter LOVES your class, and if you ever need supplies or anything, you just say the word, we’ve got money”.
What more could I ask for? My kids are pumped about learning in a web 2.0 fashion, I am teaching using almost entirely web 2.0 tools, and my kids may have a slightly better shot at being competitive in a flattening world.
I want to expand this further. The question I continually ask myself in a sort of self-development way is “What more can I do to help further the revolution?”
The day I stop asking myself that is the day our country no longer has a fighting chance.
Viva la revolucion!
Oh, and by the way, what should I ask the PTO for? They didn’t specify how much money they had, so assuming their budget is nominal (I’d say $2000 or less) and knowing that I have a decent yet slightly older laptop, a mediocre DLP projector that works fine, a set of CPS Remotes that are on loan until someone asks for them (which no one has or did even once last year) and a good internet connection.
So for what do I beg and plead?
I’d beg and plead for digital cameras, but that’s moreso because of the whole art teacher thing.
I’d ask if I could attend a PTO meeting as a guest speaker and do a training session on using the internet safely. I don’t know how many of the basics I could squeeze into half an hour or so, but it might be enough to get the parents a little more tech savvy.
And tech savvy parents are more likely to have tech savvy kids.
So here I was thinking about material stuff and Aaron brings me back to the reality that it is all about education! Thanks for grounding me.
So I could ask to attend a PTA meeting and make an attempt to get the parents fired up about web 2.0 and how to protect their kids online. I could call it something like From Consumers to Contributors, how the Read/Write web is changing our kids!
Sounds like fun!
Digital cameras would be cool for digital storytelling, though.