Wikis, education and blocked websites

Just a series of links concerning wiki's for this one: Wiki's what are they and how to use them and How I use wiki's. What do you do?

Although its a little ironic - most of the links that I want to go to are blocked by our Education department. As an educatator I want to access these links for the reasons that they were blocked in the first place - for example a skypecast about wiki's and education is blocked because it is "Chat". It's the little things like this that can spring up - unblocking isn't a problem for me - getting a website unblocked can be a real hassle; I remember when I started out. A block appears at the last minute and you have to locate the person who can unblock it, ask them to do it, and then perhaps wait ... wait until they get around it, wait until their humour improves, etc. At any rate, some of the links are blocked for reasons that are hard to explain your way around - for example bittorrent is blocked (reason "illegal") by default at my site. Now to explain why you want to access it (i.e. some files are 'free' - for example a bootable linux version of gcompris) that I want to try out on some of our older classroom PC's. It's not a 1 minute chat to explain why it's free, why the block can be removed without fear of repercussion. Well, there's this little thing called open source software ... But you have to contextualise this conversation against less than clear job descriptions, informal workplace norms / conventions that have established themselves. You know, the usual stuff - you can have all the official support in the world, but you end up having to work through other people that haven't been apprised of all the official support that you've been afforded.

Anyway, better get off to work.

Time and Tide

We live in an extraordinary time. As Vannevar Bush famously noted as far back as 1945:

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

However, it seems to me that whilst so much is potentially available to empower us as educators and so much appears to be 'just around the corner' as it were. I wonder who it is, exactly, that is going to use these devices and what teaching methodology they are going to use to achieve wonderful (but often unstated) learning outcomes.

To put this question into perspective consider the One Laptop per Child organization and their goal of creating the US$100 laptop for third world students. Whilst I personally support and applaud this project I sometimes wonder about its aims, which seem to some extent, to consider that the provision of technology is an end that will provide an educational result in itself. Consider the text on their homepage:

Introducing 2B1, the children's laptop from One Laptop per Child — a potent learning tool … a flexible, ultra low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development — immediately transforming the content and quality of their children's learning.

If we consider Marc Prensky’s “Do They Really Think Differently”, it becomes apparent that even if we do use technology, it won’t, in itself, provide much of a impact if we end up simply using this new technology to repurpose our old curriculum. What then, is the future then of 'literacy' - (if we take literacy as the abitlity to read and decode a traditional text like a novel - a handy skill to have if you ever have to read a report) - if what I or we are teaching (and I am mandated to do so) is a certain type of program requiring a monolithic block of time (perhaps 2 continuous hours) and a fairly linear approach to completing a session? How exactly then does my use of an A$6500.00 IWB / Projector / laptop combination - despite being incredibly ICT centric (merging as it does text / pictures / sound and reconstruction) - actually address such fundamental challenges as short attention spans or a tendency towards random access of text?

What exactly is it that changing our technology base / lesson mindset will require and how are we to use what we have, whether it’s a fleet of US$100 laptops in the developing world or an IWB and predominance of computers in the classroom?