Jennifer — Yes, that’s the kind of thinking I keep running into, but I keep getting the impression that the messengers in my world seem to belive that those kinds of web pages are state-of-the-art.

In the meantime, I now have the ClassBlogmeister blog, but it’s just sitting there waiting until I’ve got the “ok” to use it with students. Part of me is seriously contemplating going ahead with the project anyway, while another part of me is worried that I could lose my job over it.

What frustrates me to no end is when I consider what I would be doing right now with technology if I had never left the classroom. Probably the same stuff I was doing in 2004-05, plus adding grades at home at midnight (like you) using a newly adopted web-based gradebook.

Isn’t it interesting the powers-that-be will consider web-based approaches that facilitate data collection but not innovation, collaboration, and reflection by teachers and students?

Even if I had stayed in the classroom these last two years and somehow managed to accomplish my original goal (to design web pages), where would I be right now? I would be at the mercy of network administrators who without warning might decide over the summer to reconfigure the school’s servers (where my and my students’ web pages are forced to reside per school board policy). Oh, and assuming all is well with the servers, I would still be the only one able to access and upload files, as students are not trusted to do so.

I would have a bunch of static, non-interactive, teacher-centered web pages updated once or twice a semester, if that.

Two years ago, these publishing practices would have mostly made sense to me, and I guess I would have made the best of it. But knowing what I know now . . .

It has been a coup at my school this year to get everyone using e-mail. And I can’t even begin to describe the lack of tech support in my building. How is it that revolutionary technology is not being put into our schools? How can we not “allow” advanced tools of connection and communication in the hands of young people when the very world they live in is full of them and using them?

My students find ways to attack each other, be inappropriate, and open themselves up to worldly dangers without having a MySpace page or a blog (or even a computer, for that matter). Many of them see “the iternet” as a playground, not a workplace, not a place to think and share their thinking. So the online world is reduced in their own estimation of it, plus their access to it is limited–not only access to the machines themselves but also to blogs and other places on line that have been deemed “inappropriate.”

One of my jobs is to model, teach, require, and facilitate professional communication and connection between young people. It seems to me that nothing is harder than doing that face-to-face. To suggest that young people can’t learn to use professional tools professionally is counter-intuitive to the purpose of education in the first place.

Thanks for listening. I have two friends who also write blogs — one writes about her work in ministry, the other is a stay-at-home mom. We have such different contexts, purposes, and online voices. Sometimes I think the edublogger has more (or just different) walls to overcome. I appreciate your support.

Ms. Whatsit-I’ve been keeping up with your efforts to use blogs with your English students. I think we come from similar teaching contexts, so I am keenly interested in your process, your hurdles, and the solutions you seek. I bookmarked your Technophile post — I suspect that same scenario would play out at the school where I most recently taught for six years. I am hoping some day to steal your line, “Now do you believe me about Web 2.0?”