From a Distance...

I think that last week's topic of distance education and the history of it was pretty interesting. I really thought it was interesting to learn about how people have experiemented with using new technology to teach and learn from a distance for so long. It is neat to think that people saw the potential of even teaching by mail at one point. Then came telegraphs and educators saw even more potential in those because they sped up communication so much. I'm sure when telephones were introduced an attempt was made to educate through their use as well. I know that televisions have been used becuase I remember we had a class in my high school that was taught through the local college via television. I-TV is what it was called, I think. I'm not sure if that is still in use anymore, I wonder if the use of the internet has made I-TV obsolete? One thing is for sure, the internet is a more interactive approach to distance education and I'm guessing it is the best tool to use for that up to this point. I just wonder what new technologies will eventually come out that will make distance education even more effective becuase it is probably not a question of if that will happen, but when......

Technology Conflicts

First off, let me apologize for neglecting my blogging activities for the 10 days or so. I have fallen a little behind but I promise I will start keeping up with them so that everyone can know what is one my mind! I will backtrack to our class's readings last week about management in relation to technology in schools. After reading through some of the articles, especially the "More voices Create Better Policies" article, I began wondering how much conflict really exists between teachers and technology personnel in schools. I have only student taught, but even in that short amount of time, I could already see possible problems that could exist. There were times that I wanted to have quick access to a certain website but couldn't because it was blocked. It could be very annoying. Of course, as a lowly student teacher, I didn't really feel like it was my place to say anything to someone who could do something about it, so sometimes I just had to accept that I wasn't going to be able to use a certain website. For example, there were several videos that I could have used off youtube.com but it was a website that was blocked. I had even used a video off of that website for a lesson I had to teach to my pre-service teacher peers earlier in that semester and it had gone really well. I kind of looked forward to doing a similar lesson in student teaching. I probably could have found a way around using youtube if I really wanted to for that particular lesson, but it was just so easy to use and all I needed was Internet access. This is why youtube or sites like it, with easy access to a variety of videos, can be so useful to teachers sometimes. With that being said, I can also easily see why youtube was a site that was blocked, there is a lot more on there than educational things and students shouldn't be looking at a lot of videos on there during school. I guess what I'm getting at is that I can easily see where there could be two views on things like certain websites being blocked, which could create controversy between teachers and technology administrators. Maybe this is a question that I should put on the message board for my class, but I really just wonder how often this happens and would love to hear a teacher's perspective as well as a tech person's perspective on the conflicts that can arise. I think it is obviously great to have a tech person at every school, but it is definitely one more administrator that teacher has to deal with and that can surely create more controversy.