Joel and James,
Oh my . . . state testing and bureaucratic straitjackets! Don't
get me
started!
And also the dumb ass proprietary software packages that promise
miracles
(forgive me - I am originally from Iowa where we are plain spoken
folks) -
that's another topic.
Getting my students to be creative has been more of a stretch this
year than
ever before. They have spent all of their time in school preparing
for
tests. I feel like I need to bring my little kids' building blocks
and
just let them play.
And rural Texas schools do not believe in the importance of
offering fine arts
courses. Very few schools have choir. Art classes are minimal.
Band is
sometimes required for football programs. :)
So, I think you just need to do what you can, wherever you can, for
as long as
you can. This year I am using Linux for everything and having a
blast - but I
know I make some people nervous.
Hey . . . what do you think about hosting a fine arts gallery for
student work
created with FOSS? Have we talked about this already? I am not
big into
contests where there is only one winner . . . but a celebration of
student
achievement with some positive critiques. I could send you some
pretty cool
student generated Blender, Gimp, and Cinelerra files - then to the
local people
we can say "look at this!"
Maybe we need a formal online school that home school kids and
rural schools
can
afford that teaches music, art, science, poetry and general
creativity.
James . . . your additional comments on the dumbing down of ed tech
(whew!)
really sum it up. That quest for power thing screwed us. Is it
just the
natural sequence of organizational evolution?
To be fair, we all know there are many good people in the group too
- but it is
definitely a mixed bag.
And yes . . . "But the brown sugar is in reality an artificially
sweetened
hypnotic cleverly designed to make the worms more palatable." LOL :)
Thanks for letting me ramble on philosophically.
Marilyn
Quoting Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@xxxxxxxxx>:
Marilyn Hagle wrote:
Many in educational IT management - probably the
middle managers who are misunderstood and struggling
to keep everything running - are concerned about
tightly controlling the teachers. After all . . .
they have been breaking copyright laws, pirating
software, and inviting viruses and spyware into the
LAN. So now teachers everywhere are in lock-down mode.
Experimentation is thwarted, new ideas are discouraged,
and creativity is scorned.
And let's not forget atrocities like the No Child Left
Behind Act, which forces teachers *and* students into
bureaucratic straitjackets and makes it incredibly hard
to even think about changing anything. A proprietary
software package that is marketed with wild promises of
a "guarantee to boost scores on standardized tests" has
a big edge over any wild and risky creative things like
GIMP or Tux Paint. If you allow those misbehaving kids
and teachers to start really experimenting with any
truly flexible software, who knows what kind of trouble
we all might be getting ourselves into. . . .
Joel
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