LearningConversations

What we’ve decided is that we will no longer use the web filter as a classroom management tool.  Blocking one distraction doesn’t solve the problem of students off task – it just encourages them to find another site to distract them.  Students off task is not a technology problem – it’s a behavior problem. 

This opens up possibilities for students and staff using websites for instructional purposes that in the past were blocked due to broad category blocks.  It requires that staff and students manage their technology use rather than relying on a third party solution that can never do the job of replacing teachers monitoring students.

Peggy: I would say that this is the most remarkable experience of my life, for the reason that in most circles, I am the go-to person. I am the information person. I am the how-do-you-do-it person. In WoW, that role has been reversed, and I am the struggling learner. (A lot of it is due to time constraint. I don't have the time to go and research which add-on to use for my Holy Paladin heals and delve into the backstory as much as I'd like to.) It's a fabulous experience for me to see how the struggling child feels in the classroom, to see how you might be reluctant to raise your hand and ask a question because you feel "less than."

It's really reminded me that I have kids at all different readiness levels around me, and I have to make sure I'm not addressing just the top or the bottom or the middle. Things do have to be level. Language does have to be changed. It's a remarkable transference of understanding for me. I step out of the role of expert and become the role of learner. That's what we need our teachers to do.

But most schools and classrooms will no longer be the central learning hubs they
are today.   Today’s model of
schooling is to bring the learner to the knowledge—tomorrow we will bring the
knowledge to the learners.   We must
recognize that schools and classrooms are becoming nodes in networked learning
communities.   We must begin to
think about how to organize learning in networked communities and not limit
learning within the boundaries of classrooms and school buildings—which would be
to limit our thinking to what has been possible in the past in a single school
or node.

The new and more powerful opportunity


available to educators today is to use these
technologies to help

individuals collaboratively construct
networked learning

communities that will accelerate and augment
the community’s

learning, as well as each individual’s
learning.

We need to get rid of the circle and enable them to be learners in an open
learning environment (see Figure 5). One of the large “L’s”
in the diagram is the expert learner