Would you let your child(ren) spend as much time on the computer as you spend on it?

This was a twitterpoll sent out this morning by Brian Grenier, and my initial response was as follows:

Gr8 question-this is my point to teachers who want to block/limit student access during the school day

To which Brian replied,

I'm missing the point, can you elaborate?

To which I replied,

ahh, the limitations of 140 characters...I'll elaborate on my blog or some other public space and send to you

Twitter can definitely be a source of confusion when getting involved in back and forth discussions. Many times we lose the meaning in emails, which aren't bound by a 140 character restriction. So twitter can definitely be problemmatic in discussions.

I'll attempt to clarify my thinking (I can't promise that I'll do a very good job of it here either!!)

Brian's initial question in twitter, "Would you let your child(ren) spend as much time on the computer as you spend on it?" simply triggered something that I've been thinking for quite some time now.

Imagine if adults were forced to work with mostly analogue tools and limited access to digital tools during the work day much like students are required to do during their work day. Now imagine those adults going home and having better access to digital resources and connectivity to digital resources than they do during the work day (much like many of our students).

Why don't students have connectivity during the school day? Why should they mostly be limited to analogue tools with occasional computer lab access? Imagine if adults were forced to work with analogue tools all day with periodic access to digital resources in some centralized computer lab environment in their work place.

Anyway, this is somewhat tangential to Brian's original question, and my analogy might be somewhat flawed, but I believe students should have solid access to digital resources in the 21st century just like they had solid access to anaglogue resources in the 20th century.

Karl Fisch wrote a wonderful post on, "Why Wireless," which discusses the value of a publicly accessible WiFi node on his campus.

Over-and-out...

Top Videos from 2007

I was inspired by a recent Tweet to a blogger's post on her Top 10 Education Related videos for the year. I do apologize for not referencing the blogger and the post, but I can't seem to find the URL and my twitter time line only keeps track of a limited history. I will revise this post if I can dig up the link. Anyhow, here are my top 5 education-related videos from the past year.

#1: Karl Fisch's Did You Know 2.0
We've shared this video in our faculty web 2.0 study group and with a group of middle school parents at a recent parent education meeting. It triggered interesting conversation with both groups. Simply an outstanding piece that really makes you think...



#2: All Things Commoncraft!
These short videos have been extremely helpful in explaining web 2.0 technologies to folks who are new to blogs, wikis and like technologies. Lee Lee Lefever has the ability to break down and explain some relatively tricky concepts in a very simple manner. Below you'll find the Commoncraft video that gives an overview of Google Docs:



#3: One Laptop Per Child Program's Give One Get One Campaign:
I think the One Laptop Per Child program is one of the most revolutionary concepts/ideas of the 21st century. Creating the conduit for children all over the world to connect with information and other people will change things dramatically. Of course this change will not happen over night, but it will happen. I'm also excited because I'm the proud new owner of an XO laptop myself!



#4: Elementary School Student Art Reflections via/ Voicethread:
Voicethread is a very easy to use multimedia publishing application that fosters collaboration and communication. I've seen many interesting student project in voicethread over the past few months, but the one I'm embedding below is from a group of young elementary students at a school in Texas (thanks to Brian Grenier for posting this via twitter). It provides a nice sample of the effective use of voicethread for student publishing and project reflection.



#5: Inside of a Wind Turbine:
Last spring fellow teacher Kip Jacobs and I took a small group of interested students up to Byron, Wisconsin to take a tour Wisconsin Electric's wind turbine facility. We actually were able to go inside of the turbine where one of our students turned the rotors off and on again. Below is a short clip of the inside of the turbine that I took and posted to YouTube. My point of including this clip in my top 5 videos for the year is to show that everyone can participate in contributing and creating content on the web. This short clip has had well over 2300 views! The reason for so many views isn't because this is some great work of art-it is because there are probably very few clips in the world from the inside of an operational wind turbine. This demonstrates that a small guy like myself can create content that is of interest and use to many other individuals out there.