In the midst of this exciting time of change, it is easy to focus on what tool … It is also just as easy to focus on the how given the various details needed and the actual fun that goes into such details.

However, skipping the why because of the excitement of the what and how is a poor practice to get caught up in for educators and it surely is unacceptable for those in roles to assist educators in such planning.

This adds another dimension to my earlier questions about evaluating technology use in the classroom. Or maybe just simplifies it.

Anyway, I’m going to confess to using technology for a “why” that has nothing to do with offering new learning experiences or assessment strategies or any other appropriately educative reason. I’m using it for the sheer excitement factor.

I’ll explain: Right now I’m teaching an after-school literacy class for students needing extra support to prepare for the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT). Many of these students are there because their parents were convinced by their practice test results and a follow-up conversation that they indeed would benefit from extra help. And I am responsible for the 2-hour extra help sessions after school.

Stereotypically students who aren’t performing well on the practice tests aren’t all that excited about literacy in general. And I find that adding another two hours to their school day doesn’t usually increase their enthusiasm. They tend to show up tired, frustrated, and ready to be bored.

I tried to use pen and paper work today, rationalizing that they will have to write their test using those old-fashioned tools.

Next day I am going to use some online literacy excercises simply because a computer might make things more interesting for some students. And hopefully if they’re even just a tiny bit interested, then they might be able to get something out of this class.

We just might all survive it.

Times like these make me think hard about the boundary between this life and the hereafter. But today I also found myself wondering about the border between the real and the virtual when I overheard a conversation at the funeral. One woman was explaining that she had only just found about the funeral a few hours before it had started. In frustration she exclaimed, “If someone had posted it on Facebook, I would have known!” To which someone replied, with a small frown, “You don’t post something like this on Facebook. It’s not the place.” There then followed a conversation about the way some people do use Facebook to create memorials, and why it wasn’t appropriate for this person.

While listening to this conversation, I was at the same time able to observe several of my students who were also in the room. One of them clearly was the leader in this situation, and I believe because his peers saw that he knew how to behave. He knew how to fit in and how to convey respect and care.

These two things — the Facebook conversation, the mature student — have focused some of the questions that I have had. Are students today going to have the opportunity to live life well, like the person whose life we celebrated today? Will these teens who spend so much time virtually be able to participate in communities who come together to grieve and celebrate some of life’s deepest moments? Will Facebook become another standard way of honouring the dead? And ultimately, does a tool like Facebook have a place in the classroom?

In the Economist-hosted debate on Social Networking in Education, Ewan McIntosh argues in favour of social networking tools :

We are all learners, all the time. Ubiquitous social technologies help us connect to those who can help us learn when we’re outside the domain of formal education.

I appreciate Mr. McIntosh’s advocacy for technology in education very much, but I do question this statement of his – perhaps because I am narrowing it too specifically to consider Facebook here. On the one hand, I agree that social technologies can help us connect to those who can help us learn, but there needs to be an intentionality about that connection that seems to be missing in the usual Facebook teen’s motivation. My impression is that teens connect with their existing social networks, not necessarily to people from whom they can learn.

Dana Boyd offers a different perspective on the social networking debate:

I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why social network sites (or networking ones) should be used in the classroom. Those tools are primarily about socializing, with media and information sharing there to prop up the socialization process (much status is gained from knowing about the cool new thing).

Right now, today, I agree. She goes on:

I’m not saying that social network sites have no value. Quite the contrary. But their value is about the kinds of informal social learning that is required for maturation – understanding your community, learning the communicate with others, working through status games, building and maintaining friendships, working through personal values, etc. All too often we underestimate these processes because, traditionally, they have happened so naturally. Yet, what’s odd about today’s youth culture is that we’ve systematically taken away the opportunities for socialization. And yet we wonder why our kids are so immature compared to kids from other cultures.

Is a site like Facebook offering the kind of social learning required for maturation? Is it helping teens understand their communities? Or is it enabling them to check out of one community and into another one where just their peers and friends exist? And for me as an educator — what’s my response?

But one of the challenges of snow days is adjusting my plans. I tend to sketch out the entire semester and its due dates before we even start. One reason for doing so is that it just helps me keep on track, else I might end up with only three days to study Hamlet.  (And that would be a real tragedy!)   I’m willing to flex my plans according to student interest and ability, and usually a snow day can be worked around.  Two snow days are harder.

The other reason for my semester-long planning is that then I am able to book days in the computer lab at relevant points in the course. The labs are in high demand in our school and I can be certain that once the semester has started, I’ll need to book weeks in advance if I hope to get my students online. Snow days seem to land on days that I had booked for the lab, and I find it difficult to make my plans work around that lost day. I can’t expect to get students into the lab until my next booked date the following week. So do I put off the assignment we were going to do today until then, even though it was designed to precede our next phase of study? Do I skip the assignment and hope that I can cover the ideas in another way?

I think it’s easy to get caught up in the conversations about Web 2.0 and multiliteracies in education, and forget about the real limitations that prevent so many students from participating online. Classrooms without internet access. Over-booked computer labs. No computer or internet access at home. Snow days.

Jeff Utecht has given me another, related set of questions to think about when it comes to evaluating how technology – in this case blogging – is being used in the classroom:

What if we turned these stages of technology adoption into questions that an evaluator could use during the evaluation process?

1. Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?
2. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
3. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?
4. Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

This could be a simple list that any evaluator can use to decipher how the technology is being used in a particular lesson.

I like those questions. I like wondering if I’m using technology to create new and different learning experiences.

And now to revisit those course plans and work towards a practice that achieves new and different learning experiences while working within the bounds of technology access, policy, and student learning goals.