Post 4 Chapter 4 AKA More WIKI MUSINGS October 3, 2011

There have always been those students and teachers who by virtue of all the above plus some pretty high level thinking and goal setting have been able to accomplish great things. Now with collaboration made easier, I have no doubt that their collaborations and results will be that much greater, broader, more global, perhaps more meaningful and successful in changing our world for the better. Certainly I think this will be true beyond grade 12.... Still, I think about the mid- to lower-achievers and think that some of them might be included as well, although many of them, who do not have the slightest desire to do anything beyond what is absolutely required, and oftentimes less, some far less, will NOT be a large part of this new WIKI world.

When I write I know, in part, I am writing about some of my own students who are still trying (or not yet quite trying hard enough) to learn to read and write cogently, grasping inference and higher order meaning and skills . Those are the facts, those and the fact that our high stakes assessments just test SOME skills, just so much knowledge, just parts of what we want students to know and to do. But without their gaining that specific information –especially very particularized concepts and, as in biology (and I am a teacher of tenth grade biology—as well as English), without the knowledge and skills that ARE on the MCAS and necessary to pass those tests, our students cannot garner high school diplomas.

What this means to me as a special educator is that until the skills of computer literacy and collaboration are valued as highly as are whatever is on those assessments, we will remain primarily teachers of students who struggle to gain the knowledge they NEED to pass, not teachers of material that's important and even crucial  as Richardson suggests. It won't happen in the largest sense if it is not requisite to gaing hte skills and/or information needed to graduate high school. In addition, many more teachers not just those in special education will persist at teaching TO the particular high stakes tests. Should that whole assessment system change, should that goal change to meet the kind of skill- making Mr. Richardson talks about, I easily can envision such changes in teaching and learning.   What will not change though is that fact that the basic and higher than basic skills of reading and writing still lie at the foundation of learning everything else. Without enhanced reasoning along with reading and writing, WIKIs and the read-write internet/web—and without those basics-- peer collaboration and student group ed projects will have far less meaning, far fewer exemplary qualities than they should and will for students at more advanced levels of  literacy. 

With so little of a student's formal education time, actual time plus think time, devoted to his/her education, practice time devoted to what will be most meaningful....at what level will the collaboration and negotiation implicit in “adding to the sum of human knowledge,” truly occur?  What if our educational system must devote ever more time to teach the read-write-web allowing some students to gain entry into it (than is needed for others)?  What needs to occur to assure they have at least some of the reason and skill-based strategies to participate? What will happen to happen to groups and/or individuals of different skills, talents, and proclivities? Although many of us want to believe the new tools will make participation so much easier for all, within my core of reason, I sense the nudge of conflict even naysaying, fearing that the separations that now exist among students who understand and excel and the students who do not or may not, at the appropriate developmental level, will become greater not fewer. What if the gulf among and between them gets wider and wider as technology and its implications and applications become ever more useful in schools K-12?