Blog Reflection 1

After having completed the exercise, I have created my first blog page. Unfortunately for me, I am a bit of a technophobe. As listservs popped up, I noticed the entire dynamic of human interaction change drastically. I opted to avoid such discussions, especially when it was just as easy to discuss various subjects with people face to face. Social network sites such as Myspace and Facebook are supposedly meant to keep people in touch. With friends located all over the country and in other parts of the world, I should theoretically be in a situation to make use of these tools. Though I use skype to talk to my parents in Abu Dhabi, I have given up on Facebook. It focuses my energy on people far away to the detriment of my understanding of my immediate environs. To me it is a dangerous influence that causes me to be nostalgic and unwilling to consider the present and the future. In my opinion, there is also something rather lifeless about the discussions that take place on Facebook. This being considered, I sincerely doubt that my core beliefs about using this technology will change. On the other hand, as a Czech saying says, whose bread you eat, whose song you sing. This basically means that the sensible individual espouses the merits of whatever his or her benefactor espouses. Thus, I believe that it was meaningful use of my time and has opened my eyes to the possibility of using such technology to enhance the level of learning my students receive.

Writing down my personal philosophy of not only education, but also my stance on the role of technology allows me to consider the set of biases I hold and how I can change to meet the challenge of the 21st century. The potential for blogging is huge. One of the major concerns of my classes has been getting students to write. Pulling teeth in comparison seems to be a cake-walk. With students spending so much of their time typing random sentences here and there, this gives the students the opportunity to work on something a bit more substantial, but still in the environment they are more comfortable. In response to the article Stephen Downes wrote in 2004, I am extremely skeptical, but appreciative that he included Will Richardson more down-to-earth assessment. Downes uses the statements of fifth-graders from a Quebec City school to argue that students are receptive to a complete re-haul of the education system.When reading that an 11-year-old student wrote "the blogs give us a chance to communicate between us and motivate us to write more", large explosive flares go up. I cannot remember how many times I felt that teachers or administrators were trying to put words in my mouth for their own purposes. The great level of enthusiasm reported from students seems as authentic as teacher evaluations written before grades have been finalized.  Though I believe that students need to reach out and contact the rest of the world, I look around me now and see few adults bothering to consider the opinions of others.

The possible benefits are unimaginable and any theorizing in my opinion is mere baseless conjecture. What we know and most of us accept is as follows. It is imperative to help students and teachers make greater use of the technological tools available to reflect, learn and become part of larger communities. As Will Richardson states more and more teachers are employing blogs to communicate with students and their parents. Regardless of the evolution and the definition of blogs, they offer students, teachers and parents the opportunity to share ideas, opinions and suggestions. Instead of a lifeless webpage, the blog allows for more interaction. It also allows for continuous dissemination of related links and resources. The blogs help organize in-class discussion.  The nature of the discussion is markedly different though. Students are able to analyze their differences and similarities in a non-threating way. Blogs can be more than extra work. They can become the assignment itself. The programs available now are often free and extremely easy to use. As another fifth-grader states, the impact of the blogs on her day to day life is that she writes a lot more and a lot longer than the previous years. In addition, she pays closer attention to correct composition. In Mark Pilgrim's "Weblog Manifesto", the idea of writers yearning to write freely is presented.

Pilgrim either intentionally prepares for the counter-argument or accepts the heterogeneity of thought and concedes that those who feel neither impathy nor twinge of recognition for his words will not have the same high opinion of blogs. The darker side of what seems to be a flawless addition to education is added. How do we link the free environment with blogging with the restrictive environment of public education? Slip-ups are assured to occur and eventually students will not see the blogging as free at all. Another issue is the by Will Richardson's standards assigned blogging becomes contrived. Once the course is over, students will "drop blogging like wet cement". Blogging can also veer away from authentic and relevant conversation and become trivial. As a student, I can distinctly remember asking myself the question "Why am I doing this?" The answer invariable was that I have to, and if I do not I will be punished. Though I believe that blogging can bring education to life, how this process develops is impossible to predict. I strongly believe that in the near future the kinks will be worked out and blogging or another version of sharing will bring together the isolated learning that characterizes our school systems today and the rest of the world.

In addressing the coming changes within educational technology, Alan November lists six areas of change including perceived credibility of information on the internet, video surveillance of all classrooms, greater integration of the teaching community, the usefulness/uselessness of technology plans, informating instead of automating, and reorganization of the educational apparatus. The one change that alarms me the most and is the most understated aspect of technological integration is further widening the social inequality gap. Under the subtitle of automating vs. informating, November introduces the subject by mentioning Todd Oppenheimer's article in The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Computer Delusion". November wants to take this criticism and use it to support his stance that technology automaters are doing a disservice to the expansion of technology. A $2,000 pencil is still in essence a pencil. November argues that informating is concerned with creating an entirely new way of teaching that "builds capacity in every family for learning". He states that if technology is not infused into all families, the schools will help further widen the social inequality gap. From this line of thinking, one must wonder, who is going to provide each and every family with an up-to-date personal computer? While the government is handing out the money, could I also receive a free Apple? I personally cannot understand people when they say that technology will be an equalizer in society. As with the automobile, there are still people who cannot afford one. For those who do own or lease their own car, they are in the city of Dallas with which I am most familiar chained financially and metaphorically chained to the very machines that supposedly make their lives easier.

When November argues his opinion that every high school should require every student to take an entire online course, I am personally revolted. I remember having a conversation with an older gentleman about the outrageous cost of attending university. He posed the idea, why is it not online and why is it not free. The online courses seem to be coming, but the free element is nowhere to be seen. I see no difference in the cost of traditional tuition and online tuition. As an A student, I may be a very small eccentric minority, but all the same, I enjoy school not only for the matter-of-fact business to be attended to, but the human interaction. Elearning completely and categorically strips education of that human factor. If more than 50 percent of communication is non-verbal, one can read another's statement, but with no gestures to acknowledge, it is impossible to "read" someone. Another issue is public opinion of degrees obtained online. There is the real threat that students who work equally diligently online to obtain such degrees with face discrimination from those who received their degrees in the more conventional manner. From a friend of mine with seven years of teaching experience in the Houston ISD, I was told that the superintendent supported hiring teachers with degrees from only the top-rated Texas public universities. When one considers how this person will react to online degrees, my assumption is even more ominous.

Though I am a technophobe, I am also a realist. I strongly desire to help students prepare themselves for the challenges they will face. If I take the stance, that the new developments occurring within education technology are a mere fad, I do a horrible disservice to the very people I want to help. Limiting students because of personal prejudice is an odious injustice. Therefore, I will work hard to absorb as much as I can from the content and try to conceptualize how I will use this technology to improve the learning experience of my students. I want my students to take the information I present in class and apply it to the outside world. Equally important is that we bring the outside world with us in class discussion. The search for truth is the one pursuit I christen as holy. Whatever helps and enables my students and myself to forge ahead in this pursuit deserves its due recognition. Idealistically, I hope that after this course my suspicion and reservations are dismissed and I find myself a strong proponent of technology with a solid foundation for justifying its inclusion.  

The most fundamental question few openly answer is what the purpose of education is. America is without question a new experiment in a nation-less state with an ideologically-based identity. Though all the ethnic groups of the world are arguably mixed considering the migrations of people over time, nation-states around the world build their identity firstly around this characteristic. Since the Civil Rights Movement, the scientific racism and apologies for imperialism gave way to a shaky state-sanctioned program of inclusion in the name of making up for lost opportunities and de jure exclusion domestically. What we teach our students and what we omit are questions that confront teachers around the world from Saudi madrassas, Jewish religious schools, North Korean political science departments, and Harvard law classrooms.

The philosophy I adhere to is primarily realist with existentialist and re-constructivist sympathies and both an aversion and respect for pragmatism.  Simply put, I am a bitter idealist who sees institutional and practical constraints as the brakes placed on the wheels of individual self-realization.  My own education seems to come out of the idealist school. There was an emphasis on higher-level thinking, facts, ideas and the canon of knowledge concerning Western Civilization. These classics were taught to help students perform well on standardized tests that often cover such subjects. This also prepared students for university course work.

The search for truth, focus on self-realization, character development and moral growth were possible because of the high stakes involved. The high level of education of the parents, the high average incomes of the households and the general trend for parents to strive to help their children with their educations meant this philosophy could be put into practice. On the pyramid of needs, these students were free to address the top tier of self-realization. The holistic approach was sometimes annoyingly abstract, but the point was to keep the students thinking. Students were constantly asked to piece together connections between factors after in-depth analysis of the subject matter coming from lectures, research and projects. I agree that the model is elitist, but I think the reverence for such institutions as Ivy League education, Oxbridge tuition and other prestigious forms of education shows that our societal model is inherently elitist. Though the approach is considered bookish, my high school instruction prepared me so well for university coursework that I simply did not have to exert myself mentally until the fifth semester. The argument against such an in-depth approach makes me think of an image including cavemen drawing pictures of their action-packed hunts, scholars reading in the great library of Alexandria, and twenty-first century Americans either sitting in front of their thin-screen TVs watching football or mindlessly perusing the web on their slick laptops.  The cycle has come full circle.

               What I see as ideal is existentialism, but there still exists the problem of helping children grow up to be functional adults who can adapt to the demands of society and market forces, which do not always hold individuality high on their list of priorities. In my teaching, I try to incorporate reflective and metacognitive thinking, but I remain focused on what affects their lives in the form of assessment and graduation. In teaching history, I believe there should be an understanding of both the embellished version of a story and the sootier reality of the issue. Because I believe educational systems can stifle creativity and infringe on the development of individual maximization of talent, I want to improve this by allowing for more student input and leadership. On the other hand, once students have come to accept school as an institution that primarily decides what they can and cannot do according to behaviorist conditioning with rewards and punishments, giving the students free rein can be a disaster. Rather than embracing their newly-found freedom, some students simply play a game of discovering what limits the teacher will enforce by trial and error, which leads to nothing but disruption and wasted time. In theory I would love for my lessons to be 100% student-driven, but the problem is that by relying on their cues, I fear they will not coincidentally choose topics they will be responsible for on standardized testing.  In sum I believe that financial constraints make idealism untenable for state-supported schools. Societal pressures and market-driven corporate culture make instructing with the existentialist philosophy an act of defiance on the behalf of the teacher at the expense of the students’ futures.

               On the other side of my preferences are pragmatism and constructivism. I have taught high school and university students. Naturally-motivated students are not what I encountered every day. Real life situations are difficult to simulate in a 100-year-old classroom, and flexibility can be anathema to organization and understood expectations. Though I support a general education and experimentation, students face tests that determine their future. Diversified education is a good thing, but time constraints must be considered. Honestly, I think students should be in school until 8, 9, or 10 pm. I saw this in Korea and their standards are not at all behind ours. Plus plenty of social problems we have do not exist there at all. The criticism that pragmatism rejects traditional values in religion, ethics, and society makes me think what similar pressure would have existed during the Jim Crow Laws, Anti-Chinese Immigration Acts, the Indian Removal Act, and the McCarthy Era. Regardless of my preference for realism, I recognize the anointed position constructivism currently enjoys. Though I do believe in multiple representations of reality, and see oversimplifications as horrible concepts to disseminate, the suggestion of creating “authentic tasks in meaningful contexts” is rather abstract and ill-defined. The collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation and not through competition runs directly against the grain of our mainstream society that prides competition and individual perseverance.

Re-constructivism to me is both essential for this country to heal its wounds and possibly the greatest threat to freedom of expression. Every tightly-controlled state has tightly controlled historical interpretation. The mark of a free country in my perspective is the liberty to address the most controversial and divisive of topics with conflicting opinions given the same respect. Proponents of the opposing opinions must use logic and reason to reach a compromise of sorts or at least agree to disagree. Until this country lays out a codified list of state-sanctioned beliefs, God willing this day will never come, correcting social ills can be very tricky. The attempt to eradicate discrimination and make amends for ignoring subjects deliberately to justify dubious assumptions about society can lead to equally tyrannical demands of conformity.  For teachers to focus so much energy on convincing students of the need for change, training them to be social activists and petition the government, the political atmosphere of the country would have to be drastically different. It is my understanding that parents, citizens, policy makers and politicians do not believe that teachers are in a position to determine the beliefs that students are supposed to hold close to their hearts. All the same, I strongly support instructing students to pay attention to world issues and read literature from around the world.

               This leads me to the philosophy I identify with the most, realism. Perceived logic can easily lead to incorrect conclusions and what we think exists does not always exist. In order to gain as much understanding while simultaneously taking into account limitations, realists attempt to be as objective as possible.  Students are asked to deduce meaning from their observations and not to force previously conceived notions on the subject of their investigation. Students study systems, arrangements, order of processes and deduce theories about the relationships being observed. Though the scientific method may not be impeccable, it is the best model we currently have. Watered-down courses waste students’ time, mislead audiences, and result in meek outcomes. I do not like being a guinea pig. Thus I assume my students do not either. School, like work, must be goal-driven. People in whatever capacity work harder when they have a stake in the result and the goal is not obscure, convoluted, and based on the interests of someone out of touch with their realities. Though lectures seem to be out of vogue, I see lectures as productive, and when people do not have a frame of reference for a historical event such as the partition of India, it is best to give them some background information. With students who reliably read, this can be done as homework. With students who are a bit more recalcitrant, lecture may be the only input they receive concerning the facts and figures. The questions given on standardized tests measure students’ ability to use background information already stored to make logical assertions. If the students are not even remotely familiar with the topics, there is no way they will be receive positive marks. As out of vogue teacher-centered classrooms are, the research still states that teacher-talk-time has decreased only marginally regardless of concerted efforts to flip the ratio.  I try to use the teacher-centered classroom to mine as much student participation out of the students as possible. In my opinion, the best teacher walks the tight rope balancing a preconceived understanding of which directions the class should go and an ability to adapt to the personal needs and interests of the students authentically. It is this authenticity that cannot be trained for. This comes with luck, subconscious adaption and not only a lot of experience, but the intelligence to piece together the lessons of past failures and successes. 

               The critics of realism state the realist approach is inhuman, mundane, rigid, scientifically cold, and inherently classist. It also purportedly fails to consider the totality of man and overemphasizes hard work and discipline. This is where my opinions come forth. I face a wretched job market and accept that I will probably have to deal with pay cuts, that unemployment will probably rise, that I will possibly be added to its ranks, and that job skills are not well-matched with those of our educational system’s products. I think our country needs a large dose of realism. I have worked with a Spanish company and envied my coworkers who could take siestas. On the other hand, the high number of unemployment makes getting a job there a bit trickier. A Cypriot I knew used to tell me about the slow and leisurely pace of life in her homeland. They, like other EU members, are being forced to ask for bailouts. Other first world economies like France and Italy with their work ethic heavily tied to humane treatment are not doing as well as other economies with cultures based heavily on relationships of responsibility. As Americans, we face competition we have not seen since before the U.S. took its place as world hegemon. Our lifestyle, our status, our way of life depend on our ability to create the most innovative and effective system of education. We have a long way to go.

A great teacher cannot be defined in the way an acute triangle can. Teacher accountability and the obsession civil servants have concerning how to designate such wastes valuable time. A great teacher is one who when allowed the freedom to create a wonderful learning environment without restrictions, fulfills his or her duties. This is a vague, but I believe you cannot quantify success for this profession.  

The various needs I had as a student, a child, an adolescent, and a young man were met at different times by individual teachers who have affected me greatly. My second-grade teacher never allowed me to lazily just coast through class. Whether IQ testing has any justification or not, my scores at this time were extremely high. Being close to the bottom of the socio-economic barrel in such an elitist neighborhood can be overwhelming. She helped me gain the confidence to shine academically in an environment where my peers may have had wealthier family backgrounds, yet less developed cognitive skills. My high school English teacher helped me formulate reasonable and defensible arguments against draconian rules with faulty foundations. If we sincerely believe that the cultivation of democratic principles is the primary task of our state school systems, it is imperative that students be given a chance to construct their own arguments. At the university level, I had a wonderful German professor who pushed me to work harder on my German even though I had never visited the country and was taking advanced composition. The wealthy will always be able to pay for SAT prep courses, private tutors, and astronomically expensive university tuition fees. It is the talent that lies in the muck of lower-class and middle-class mediocrity that needs to be nurtured and unleashed.  

As a fifth grader, I can distinctly remember a teacher telling my friend that he would never amount to anything. Like myself, my friend had recently moved into the neighborhood from a less than an affluent area.  Our teacher seemed to be a self-designated inspector of appropriate character and thought. He made learning a matter of conflict. Regardless if I was interested in the subject matter, his legalist way of thinking only made me feel imprisoned in his classes. Thus, all learning from this teacher stopped. Trying to beat a sense of inferiority into an 11-year-old is simply despicable. In high school, I witnessed world history be butchered by a football coach who belongs in the recruiting office instead of the classroom. Some teachers respectfully admit their limits, while others brow beat their students into being afraid to ask questions.  I dreaded going to that class because instead of receiving anything insightful, I was forced to listen to football locker-room jokes for more than half the period. At university I remember another “teacher” who supposedly taught us intermediate German. The class met only twice a week, so his frequent cancellations amounted to theft. Though I resented his completely visible disdain for teaching practical German classes, I was aware that his career depended on publishing at the students’ expense in the hopes of raising university prestige. My ability to speak German was but a minor concern and their neglect was an unfortunate but unavoidable result. Lastly, there were my University of Texas professors. The head of my Czech department was in the process of resigning and relocating, and quite frankly could not be bothered.

The best teachers set the benchmark for what I need to become. The other teachers are the benchmark for what I should never become. I want to wake up and feel that if God is looking over my shoulder, he or she has nothing to criticize. I want to help people the way so many good people helped me. I want to be someone who makes students feel comfortable exploring ideas instead of rehashing the same stuff that has weakened our economy, made us the most obese nation on earth and the primary suspect in the humanity’s disastrous alteration of ecosystems. In lieu of my experience with the University of Texas, I want to be a teacher who remains loyal to his obligations by being a helpful mentor even when the district is about to start lay-offs, even when my coordinator is in a bad mood, or there are family problems at home. A professional, like a soldier does not allow these factors to influence his or her performance. Teaching and waging war are both in the interests of the entire population of a state. Thus a fitting synonym for teachers are warriors fighting ignorance and helplessness.

The reason for my desire to become a teacher can be looked at cynically or romantically. Within our own society, there is the saying that if you can’t do anything, then teach, and if you can’t teach, teach at the university level. Having taught at the university level, maybe I fit in both the former and the latter. The romantic perspective of my choice of profession is that I hope to take the information I have accrued and help students think critically, avoid oversimplification and grapple with the complexities of this world so that we may advance as a people, a nation and more importantly a species. From questioning rampant cultural bigotry in Korea, the foundation of institutional racism toward the Roma in the Czech Republic to my Saudi students’ perceived need for the destruction of Israel, I have tried to instill in student’s a notion of world community.

I personally consider myself passionate, approachable, and willing to walk the extra mile for students.

As a prospective social studies teacher, I want my students to learn that the black and white painting of the world they have been presented is a far cry from reality. I want my students to think for themselves, create their own opinions and most importantly be able to back up those opinions with logical arguments regardless if they resemble my own opinion. The goal is to help students regardless of their beliefs be able to stand by their assertions, yet be able to accept constructive criticism. Another goal in teaching history would be to make students recognize that their understanding of the wider world is riddled with huge holes in the hopes of prompting them to learn more and more. Many adults become complacent with ignorance. No one at the age of 17 has a firm and intricate understanding of the world. Only in the curious days of our adolescence do we care to find out more information. Upon receiving the never-ending list of responsibilities that accompany adulthood, many simply learn what they have to and call it a day.

Pedagogical research seems to have produced many new and innovating theories, yet the quality of our education in our age of information has progressively plummeted. With this understanding, I accept the works of prominent scholars, yet try to be as practical as possible. Each individual is different. Every group of individuals interacts differently. Teachers need to be able to adapt to these ever-changing circumstances and avoid applying theories to entire groups with the justification that it is new and research-based. If the students want activities, give them the opportunity to enjoy their learning. If the class is not as interested and the group work is more of a hokey experiment in cooperative learning than a genuine method of instruction, I will revert to what they know. Teachers are not omnipotent beings that can convince students at all times that their lessons are designed to enrich the students’ lives.  Experimentation is great, but having been a student, I prefer not to be used as a guinea pig. It did not make me feel more respect for my teacher’s ability. It simply made me distrust the teacher’s sincerity.

It is worth noting that I have made no conscious decision to study technology. As a youth, I poked fun at my friends who spent hours playing video games. The sad truth is that the people who isolated themselves from society and lived out their lives through avatars proved to be at the forefront of our new age. Working with glorified chalkboards, I find myself in a catch 22. We need to use more technology because the students do not respond the same as they used to. Bombarded by images, videos, podcasts and other blips, students need more technological interaction. The question is whether teachers have become sales representatives for Microsoft, Apple or other technology-based companies instead of distributors of knowledge. Realistically I have heard over and over again that we need to incorporate technology into the classroom. One funny consequence of this at one of my schools was that we had a smart projector sitting in the corner of the classroom because it interfered with the lesson. As a university lecturer in the Czech Republic, I noticed that whatever technical skills an American educator could have, it would not matter in an environment with 20-year-old computers intermittently running on XP without Microsoft Office, and not enough money to fix the copy machine, from which the students get their texts. American school districts dole out more and more cash on technology while firing teachers. Logically, some teachers will see themselves replaced by written programs in the next fifty years, yet all are judged according to their “correct” incorporation of technology in their classes.  To appease these pressures, I try to be an informator instead of an automator. I want the addition to have a purpose and not simply be an exercise in teacher technological competence. Another pressing issue is to help students understand which sources are reliable and which are simply drivel written in the heat of the moment by an individual with no desire to back up his or her theories. The technological addition has to help students cross the bridge to understanding. As a teacher, I need to be aware of changing trends, standards and norms. Time is always an issue in classrooms and if technology supports the biggest bang for their buck, then I use it.

Facing the problem of educating our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and class oriented society, I base my methodology around realism. I see the situation here in the United States tipping into an abyss most of us are not ready to accept. With the world transforming exponentially at a rate no generation before us can even fathom, change is essential. The question is what kind of change. When we consider the state of our nation and our species, whatever methods have been employed in the past have created the society we live in today.  Far from perfect these methods need some alteration. The problem is when teachers obsequiously follow trends in education and neglect the actual work of educating. In my own teaching, I constantly consider how I compare to the most effective of my former teachers and the most ineffective of them. The most pertinent problem I face is that there is no precedent for the incorporation of technology. With this stated, I will stand on the sidelines and let the more dare-devilish of teachers do the experimentation, yet I will accept their findings and change my practices appropriately.