Caryn's Thoughts on "World Without Walls"

CARYN'S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS on "World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others" by Will Richardson

WARNING: This blog post is simply my note-taking and thinking on the required reading article. Perhaps I am a complete dolt, but I have a lot of questions about this article and some of the ideas it presents. My theories and ideas at the end of this post are not set in stone, I'm a work in progress and so are my thoughts.

Who is this guy?
From a BRIEF google search which included Wikipedia and District Administration Magazine column "The Pulse", the author of this article was a public school teacher in New Jersey for 22 years, is the author of a book, "Blogs, Wikis...", runs the Weblogged blog, and is a speaker, presenter, etc. of implementing technology into the classroom.

Paragraph 5 - "Welcome to the Collaboration Age" where all can access the "most transformative connecting technologies the world has ever seen." Hmmm.

Paragraph 6 - We can "mine the wisdom and experiences of more than 1 billion people" and "do good work together." Just how many of those 1 billion people are actually wise enough in experiences and maturity for me to consider appropriate teachers for my students? And if we can "do good work together" then can't these technologies also help the less moral to do bad work together?

Paragraph 7 - "Our ability to learn whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want is rendering the linear, age-grouped, teacher-guided curriculum less and less relevant." Really? As adults, we have the life experience and educational foundation on which to build new learning and explore our passions. Do children have the basic foundation on which they can construct meaning for themselves about whatever they want from whomever they want?

Paragraph 9 - "...facts and truths are constantly changing..." Which facts are constantly changing? Which truths are constantly changing? The internet and it's capabilities are certainly undergoing radical change, but I'd say a pebble is still a pebble, and a mother's love for her child are facts and truths that don't change that much across the years.
"...working together is becoming the norm, not the exception." When has working alone been the norm? Since the dawn of humanity, any significant endeavor from planting a garden, to constructing a building, to raising children has been accomplished by people working together.

Paragraph 10 - "It's about being able to form safe, effective networks and communities around those explorations, trust and be trusted in the process..." How do you develop trust with someone you have never met and only know in relation to one, shared interest?

Paragraph 11 - "It's about working together to create our own curricula..." Do you mean that we get to decide what we think we should learn? Do kids also get to create their own curricula? Do they have the maturity to know what it is they need to learn? From my experience, these young individuals, if given the choice, would eat junk food, shun vegetables, never bathe or brush their teeth, stay up too late, and watch junk on a screen instead of getting exercise. Should they be creating their own curricula?

Paragraph 12 - the "most effective teachers will be the ones they discover, not the ones they are given." Yes, this can sometimes be the case. It is also true that some of the teachers we learn the most from are the people we would never have chosen to be our teachers.

Paragraph 13 - "That's no slight against the people in their face-to-face classrooms, who are equally important in a connected world..." Um, well, actually, I am feeling a bit slighted. And exactly HOW are face-to-face teachers "equally important?" It's a nice, PR statement with nothing to back it up.

Paragraph 16 - "We must also expand our ability to think critically about the deluge of information now being produced by millions of amateur authors without traditional editors and researchers as gatekeepers." YES! Anyone can be an author these days. All you have to do is sign up and post your blog. You can put anything you want on your profile page. Who's going to check?

Paragraph 18 - New word for me: Vetting - checking out someone's background.

Paragraph 22 - "We no longer have to be present to participate." Yes, but how fully can one participate without being present? It's all good and fine to offer your opinion on what is being done somewhere else by someone else, but there is no substitute for real-time, hands-on participation.

Paragraph 24 - "...not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives..." Has anyone defined what this sort of healthy balance looks like? I'd like to know. Again, this is a nice quip with no support.

Paragraph 28 - "In our zeal to hold on to the old structures of teaching and learning..." Sorry, as a teacher my zeal is for my students, not for my structures of teaching. If I'm not trying to foster a love of learning and helping each of my students to develop a solid foundation for their future learning, then I shouldn't be a teacher.

Paragraphs 29 & 30 - "What educators must do now" is "begin to co-create and colearn the same way may of our students already do." I do not disagree. There are many ways to use technology to collaborate and connect with learners not sharing your classroom.

However, when push comes to shove, we all still need to learn to work with the people that we sit next to in class, rub shoulders with in the hallways, and see each day. This is why many of today's teachers are best equipped to teach today's students. We may not know how to navigate our way adroitly around the web, but we know how to walk across the room, say hello, shake a hand, work on a joint project, and think of clever and meaningful ways to interact without having to resort to the backspace key.

Real-time, face-to-face interactions and hands-on participation are facts and truths that will not change. No matter how much time we spend interacting with one another, screen-to-screen, from the safety of our cubicles, there is a real world out there where we still need to work. Real people need eye-contact. Real people need real hugs. Real problems need real people and a commitment to be present to participate.