2007: The Year it all Changed?


On Monday, I spoke in front of the Iroquois Board of Education on behalf of a technology initiative our high school has undertaken. The presentation was titled, the Velocity of Change: Technology in the Classroom. During the course of the fifteen minute presentation, I exposed the board to several web-based technologies many of the teachers in the high school have recently embraced. Overall, I felt very strongly that it was a positive moment for changing the perception of web-based technologies in the classroom.

I left the meeting, rushing home to catch the two-hour episode of "24" (Jack is too much), all the while thinking of what would be the most effective next step. Having just read Will Richardson's post Worse Before it Gets Better, I began to think of the "Power of One", a book I read in the early 1990's by Bryce Courtney. It has always left me with the idea that an individual has the tremendous capacity to influence the thinking of the ignorant. I can state that a man named Will has had that type of influence on me, and thus indirectly, many of my colleagues.

If there is a cultural lack of knowledge about the validity and revolutionary qualities of these technologies, why not incorporate traditional means of communication to further the cause. How can we as a group of educators, looking to promote the benefits of these tools, expect a culture dependent upon the media to gain an educated understanding of their value, when the media itself is unfamiliar with blogs, wikis, and online tools of collaboration. Now I realize the heavy hitters in the national media are a part of the blogging community; however, the local media, who form the basis of much local parental perception, lack an understanding of the dynamic uses of these tools. I myself have a family member in the media, who is unfamiliar with the power of delicious, diigo, blogs, and wikis. Should we not be looking at the bigger picture and look to extend our educational strategy of these tools beyond the school board, and incorporate a self-promoting campaign that incorporates the local and regional media. Imagine the power a media series could have on the technology budgets of school districts, looking to educate the voting populous. Imagine film crews in classrooms, interviewing teachers and students, showing concrete examples of these tools in action, all promoting the positive juxtaposition to the types of negative (though accurate) coverage seen in media presentations such as Datelines: To Catch a Predator.

If we as an educated community, with all of our dynamic talents and energies, form an organized media blitz, that taps into the security blanket of media guided information, which most people have come to rely on, wouldn't we be better serving this movement? We all know that our calendar year is marked with days manufactured by major corporations, like sweetest day (I still think several greeting card corps. used their lobby groups to secure these dates). Why not declare a date on our calendars like May 11th, 2007 as the day of technological reckoning. We could even devise some very cool, though geeky name like "bring the web to work day! " (Just kidding of course). How about something as simple as Technology Day. We have wellness weeks, we have red-ribbon days for anti-drugs, hands across America for aids, Live Aid, and we even have dress down Fridays. People, this is not a pipe dream! We could make 2007 The Year it all Changed. All we need to do is become organized. We have all the tools we need to pull this off at the touch of our fingers.