Vending Machines

“Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.” (Author Unknown)

If you go back and read the comment that follows my last posting, you will read one individual’s views on educators’ resistance to change. Ira Socal wrote, “Maybe, we do not change because we do not want to.” I have sensed this for a very long time

I began my teaching career as a special educator in Salt Lake City in the early '80s. I was 30-something and I was, and at 55 I remain, dedicated to change. But I also saw the more elderly teacher, the one who was most “set in her way” to be unwilling to make any changes in her practice of educating children. Perhaps, she was about 55 then, but I still do not embrace her philosophy.

I do not believe that technological advances are magical “fixes”, but I believe as Ira Socal wrote on his own blog (today) - http://speedchange.blogspot.com/ - that with technology teachers can offer “simple solutions to the most common struggles he as seen among all kids in all schools.”

I also believe strongly that it is in the networking and collaboration and community building between both local site-based teachers and educators from around the world – that we can learn the most through sharing and commenting and building upon our own base of knowledge.

In the 80s, I worked in elementary and middle schools as a resource teacher. My students were "pulled out" of "regular" classrooms and came to me for instruction for reading and math. I began to realize how critical I was of some of the other teachers, but later I realized that I had always made very quick, but usually accurate, judgments about my own teachers. I learned early on that if I could read what I needed to know for a test in a textbook - I really did not have to pay attention in school or even attend university classes. I certainly was not given the opportunity to collaborate with my classmates as that was, at the time, considered “cheating”. But I still was able to earn A’s and B’s. What I learned was flat and boring, and it did not stay with me for long.

This served me well enough in high school, during my Bachelor Degree in the 70s, and to some degree while I completed a 30 quarter-hour special education certification program with a University of Utah cohort group in the late 70s and until 1981. I had important things to do, a full time job, and most importantly a young daughter to raise – and I had high expectation for what a good teacher was supposed to teach me during the course of a class or the entire course- as to not waste my valuable time

Now as I work on my doctorate degree (at my advanced age), I have finally come to know dedicated and innovative teachers in this field of Educational Technology who seem to hold my attention with articulate research and information about new tools and that engaging term “collaboration” where learning has the opportunity to grow exponentially as it is shared in social settings.

I will continue my blog to cheer-lead for collaborative practice and change, and I will suggest that technology and “Internet Enabled Collaborative Learning Tools” offer great platforms and opportunities for improving education and professional development.

So, for tonight that is the soapbox upon which I stand. Tomorrow, I have a handful of engaging and interesting articles I found today about Teacher Networks and effective Communities of Practice, to bring us full circle to the main purpose of this blog. I will share the main points of these articles and hope that my friends, colleagues and the occasional blog browser reads and comes away believing a little more whole-heartedly in “change”.

Ciao.