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Dan McGuire
Minneapolis, MN
I teach 3rd and 4th grade in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Recent Activity
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Dan signed the petition | -
Dan commented on the article |Using Moodle is important for more than just saving money, even though it does do that. The creative ability that it gives to teachers is worth a lot of money that doesn't easily show up on cost comparisons. Moodle is about actually participating in global teaching and learning and in its ongoing renewal, not just installing a software package.
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Dan commented on the article |The notion that teachers would be meeting less with parents is not mentioned at all in the post above. Suggesting that using more methods of communicating will result in less use of one particular method is not supported by anything I've ever heard about. Text messaging and emails increase parental involvment in their child's education and can even increase the amount and frequency of parent attendance at conferences if they're used right. It's all about how the tools are used in conjunction with the other tools in the box. Having mastery of a variety of communications tools increases possibilities.
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Dan commented on the article |This is a huge topic. It's really several topics all mashed together. The sub topics that I see are:
Access to current technologies in schools for poor and minorities.
Access to current technologies out of school for poor and minorities.
Types of technologies in use in school.
Teacher training on use of technology for teaching and learning.
Administrator training on use of technology for teaching and learning.
There are more but I'd start with the above after first doing some more investigation into how we measure all of the above. Generating data on the use of technology is a problem. Jon has done some great work on this, but a big bunch of his data is from 2005 and even earlier. The world has changed significantly since 2005. How many different devices and access plans have you changed since 2005?
The other big issue is how the data is generated. Access reporting is very unstable and unreliable. As an elementary classroom teacher I can tell you that the number of my families that have access to the Internet varies depending on who you ask. The central school administration has one number, the building has another number, a classroom teacher can get another number, and the students themselves can produce an altogether different set of numbers. I don't give all of my email accounts to just anybody who asks. I know lots of parents who don't want "the Man" to know their email address or their cell phone number. Students and parents don't give me their email and cell numbers until they trust me, and some not even then; they want to be the ones to decide how and what information comes to them. So, the data varies a lot depending on when you ask and who's asking.
Now onto another aspect of this issue -Access in general.
Fact: we have the resources already in place to provide access to everybody. It's not about money; its about control. For example, here in Minneapolis all residents of Minneapolis have free internet access to all civic and educational web sites via the local wifi provider. My students can access my class Moodle site for free, which means I can communicate with all of my students and their parents as long as they can get a hold of a used $100 laptop with a wifi card like the one with which I'm writing this post. The problem is that not many people know this fact and there aren't many who are attempting to educate people about this fact. Our school district is certainly not making this information widely known. The reason it's not making the info widely known is because the district doesn't have the equipment in place to make use of the technology and most teachers don't know how to make use of the technology. It's not because the poor kids don't want to or won't be able to use the technology if it is used.
I realize that the availability of a internet signal varies a lot depending on where you live, but I'll state again - it's not about the money. It's about control. The whole country of Macedonia has internet access and Brazil is quickly gaining ground on the US in the percentage of people with access. It's not about money, it's about control.
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Dan commented on the article |This position of maintaining decorum and control is actually a canard for not wanting to face the overwhelming change that is occurring in our world. No one is suggesting to not have consideration for others. In fact, Ira is pleading that others have more consideration for those for whom the new technologies are are vital.
I think the ludites here feel put upon because they weren't consulted when the world decided to change, and by god and every other notion that can be called upon they intend to maintain their place. Get over it! This isn't personal; it's universal.
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Dan commented on the article |Rich,
I think your observation of Nashville supports my contention. I only have personal expereince in Minneapolis where I now teach and in St. Paul where I lived for a while. My few years in New England only gave me a superficial understanding of Boston. I know nothing about Long Island - I had dinner at my neice's in Queens a few years back, have been to JFK and LaGuardia a few times, but I hardly think that qualifies me to say anything about Long Island. (If you go to Brooklyn and Queens have you really been to Long Island?) In general, I've found Long Island hard to get to, hard to get out of, and generally not very representative of mainland USA.
Growing up in South Dakota taught me almost nothing about integration or segregation, unless you want to talk about real segregation - the reservation kind.
I really appreciated reading the story, though, about Ira's New Rochelle in 1963, which I've only seen from the train on my one trip through. I think I'll post a link to it on the Minneapolis_Parents Forum web site where the strategic plan to fix the Mpls schools is sort of being discussed. We don't use the term, Negroe, much anymore, but not a whole lot else has changed, it seems.
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Dan commented on the article |
I'm becoming more convinced that our large urban districts are a big part of the problem. The facts about what gets spent for each kid and who's teaching each kid get lost in the jungle of our urban school bureaucracies.
Also, we need to talk about all of the dollars that get spent on each child's education. That means including the money that parents spend on extra-curricular activities, health care, nutrition. and out of school child care - they're all necessary to an education. If we balance all of those things, we'll be on our way to actually doing something about the disparities that exist.
So, we can start by saying school districts can have no more than 10,000 students each. That should also get rid of some of the big buck administrative jobs.
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Dan commented on the article |
This is a response to Clay's Singapore post: (Good luck on the housing - that, too, along with rock and roll, is a universal issue.)
Clay said, "I have to agree there is a level of condescension and sarcasm that really does quite ironically undercut a lot of arguments in this thread that technology can help teach social skills and civilized debate. I would be surprised to hear some of the more cutting things said above in a face to face discussion. That they were said by the pro-cellphone camp is surprising."
I've read some condescension, sarcasm, and even passive aggressive hostility from the anti-cell phone folks, too. Getting rid of cell phones is a hostile act in this day and age; it's not instruction in etiquette. As Joe said, using this tool, the change.org blog, to boltster resistance to change is what's surprising.
Thanks, btw, for clarifying the non-connection to the Obama administration.
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Dan commented on the article |
Melanie,
We will always need good farriers and great calligraphers.
I was challenging your assertion that "Students who own cellphones are still a minority in my school." I noticed that you teach in Quebec which does have one of the lowest percentages of cell phone ownership in North America, but I'm still doubtful that the owners of cell phones are a minority. I'm not accusing anyone of lying, though, because it is, of course, possible that less than 50% of your students own cell phones. It is also possible that you made a mistake, or the students misunderstood your question. At any rate, very soon if not already it is much more than likely that a majority of your students will own cell phones.
The issue, though, is how you participate in the creation and then recreation of our ever evolving culture and society. Our tools define our culture; our ways of expressing our thoughts and communicating our ideas are our literacy.
No matter what you teach or at what grade level you teach, cell phones are/will be a primary mode of literacy in our society. Hey, the Dalai Lama is on Twitter. Pretending that cell phones are mere distractions to something else is denying the reality of our culture. Lots of very good people make a living denying the reality of our culture, but our job is to teach.
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Dan commented on the article |
This discussion is not even close to being over. The question is - what really is the issue? Ira has helped immensely by framing the discourse by the kinds of research we bring.
Another way might be to determine what we're trying to accomplish and who we want to serve.
Determining the actual market penetration of cell phones by demographics is fairly simple. Send me your postal code and I can give you a reasonably accurate number. (I have doubts about the the accuracy of MK's assertion.) This is not a theoretically issue; it's a matter of fact like the amount of sunlight at any given point on the earth. We can maeasure these kinds of things today much more accurately than the builders of New Grange were able to do 5,000 years ago, even though they were actually quite sophisticated.
The tools we use define our culture. In which culture are we preparing our students to thrive?
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