Dana Huff has a piece on Karl Fisch’s piece on Terry Freedman’s piece about teachers who are proud of their technological ineptitude.  So at the risk of contributing to the echo chamber effect, here’re my thoughts.  They’ve been rattling around for a while, but I can’t guarantee that they’re anywhere near formed.

Anyway, let’s start with a quote from Dana, who I think is one of the more readable edbloggers out there:

In our society, dependent as it now is on technology, teachers who are incompetent with technology are jeopardizing their students’ success. I am not saying we all need to be at an expert level, but I’ll ask the same question Terry did. What message are teachers who can’t even create and edit a simple Word document sending their students?

Dana (and Karl and Terry) bemoans the seeming pride that many teachers display when they say things like, “Oh, I’m computer illiterate” when they’re asked to do things like create a Word document or check their email.  Since David and I led the blogging PLP last year, I can’t tell you how many teachers have come up to me to tell me how irrelevant computer stuff is to their practice.   As if, I suppose, I’m going to take offense and punch them in the nose for daring to insult Almighty Technology.  As if, I suppose, they’re challenging the Master Control Program directly.

MCP On choosing ignorance

Because here’s the thing: I’m now one of the school’s “tech guys”.  I represent the English department on TWIG (Technology Working Group, about which I really don’t want to say anything more right now).  I’ve been tasked with making our department website not awful anymore (which would be easier if FinalSite weren’t one of the clunkier WYSIWYG editors I’ve ever had to work with, which is saying a lot).  I had to deliver the Staff Development harangue about 21st Century Skills on the penultimate day of responsibility last June.

Y’know what?  I’m sick of it.  I’m sick of being one of the only people feel like they can go to about this stuff.  I’m flattered, I suppose, that people think my skills are somehow helpful, but I don’t understand why so many of my colleagues feel that they can’t learn how to do a lot of this stuff.  Wait–not afraid–uninterested.  It doesn’t take a tech mastermind to set your students up to keep a blog or a wiki–get them over to Learnerblogs and Wikispaces and let them go to town.   They’re probably doing that stuff already anyway.

At our Opening Rally this year, our superintendent told us some startling (heh) statistics about MySpace and Facebook.  To paraphrase, an awful lot of kids are doing an awful lot of stuff on Facebook, and the guy who invented it wants to turn it from a social network into a productivity platform.  Now, I doubt that’ll work (there are so many dumb apps on Facebook–Zombies?  Happy Hour?  C’mon–that I’m sure the backlash is just around the corner) but what struck me was the whispering going on in the row in front of me.

“I am shocked,” someone approximately said, “that people are willing to share information about themselves online.”

“Yes,” another kind of said.  “Why won’t kids just sit under trees and read books like we did when we were growing up?”

The kicker here is that neither of these individuals are over 30 years old.

Look.  Here’s the deal.  Hey you–yeah, you–you teachers:  I don’t care if you personally think Facebook is worthwhile, or that blogs are interesting to read.  Facebook’s probably a total waste of time, and the vast majority of blogs (this one included) are self-indulgent pap.  But this is the world we live in–not just our students.  If you don’t go home and spend hours online every evening, it doesn’t matter.  Your students do.  And who are we serving, anyway?  Get with the times or risk doing your students a disservice.

Terry Freedman nails it, by the way:

I’m sorry, but I don’t go for all this digital natives and immigrants stuff when it comes to this: I don’t know anything about the internal combustion engine, but I know it’s pretty dangerous to wander about on the road, so I’ve learnt to handle myself safely when I need to get from one side of the road to the other.

We can have the argument about whether students’ online lives are making them better or worse people another time.  We can lament the fact that people read fewer Great Books later (or earlier, since I addressed that in December).  Maybe I’ll throw in a zinger about tearing down the canon and injecting some democracy into the proceedings.  Right now, though, I don’t care.   Without getting rid of the pride in ignorance polluting our profession, there’s no point in having the other conversations.