(Please excuse the late posting of this... it was hiding as a 'draft' when I'm sure I published it!!)
*******************************************************Last night, at a very small cocktail bar in town, started out so well... and ended up with me ranting and raving to Lewis (my husband) all the way home!
I met up with a friend I've known since high school and she brought along her brother (to be named "X") who's currently studying a Bachelor of Computer Science at a NZ University. Eventually the conversation turned to him and his studies and I expressed and interest in what his qualification was teaching him (javascript, CSS etc).
But the conversation turned when I mentioned blogging, podcasting, use of wikis and skype etc in education.And the response.... you would have honestly thought I'd just invented the concept of educational blogging, podcasting etc!!
His first reaction was "What! for recreation and leisure??" to which I answered "No.... for education and learning".
Hmmm... this did not go down well!
To X's credit I WAS given a few minutes to justify my use of these "silly" tools... and he listened politely.... but nothing I could say could convince! I listed benefits, gave examples and really got on my high horse.... to no avail.
I was just banging my head against a closed door.
This really got me thinking on the way home (out loud unfortunately for my hubby) .... do lots of the computer 'geeks' of the world think blogging etc is just the people's way of ranting and raving about useless, unintelligent subjects.... or are they just unhappy that the web has opened up to the ordinary Joe or Josephine of the world???
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Same sort of thing happened to me when I rang our IT Watchdog service to get a Skype unblocked- firstly what is it and why would you want to use it in a classroom- the guy was genuinely interested in the application and said he would give it a try himself.
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