Comments on: Arne Duncan and His Distance Learning Missive http://tweenteacher.com/2009/08/12/arne-duncan-and-his-distance-learning-missive/ Heather Wolpert-Gawron Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:35:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: Susan Graham http://tweenteacher.com/2009/08/12/arne-duncan-and-his-distance-learning-missive/comment-page-1/#comment-3040 Susan Graham Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:28:28 +0000 http://tweenteacher.com/?p=532#comment-3040 "Educators need to start thinking now about having temporary home school in place....." In too many classrooms across the country teachers are not trusted to design and deliver their curriculum outside a regime of scripted lessons on an inflexible time line,yet educators, rather than policy decisionmakiers, should be thinking up the design an on-line school plan that can implement on demand if schools close. If Sec. Duncan has faith that educators are up the challenge of transforming delivery of education as an emergency response to an epidemic, why not trust educators to solve instruction problems when the educators and the educatees aren't contagious? I'm not saying we couldn't do it, I'm just wondering why it takes disease and disaster to let us design our own solutions. “Educators need to start thinking now about having temporary home school in place…..”
In too many classrooms across the country teachers are not trusted to design and deliver their curriculum outside a regime of scripted lessons on an inflexible time line,yet educators, rather than policy decisionmakiers, should be thinking up the design an on-line school plan that can implement on demand if schools close. If Sec. Duncan has faith that educators are up the challenge of transforming delivery of education as an emergency response to an epidemic, why not trust educators to solve instruction problems when the educators and the educatees aren’t contagious? I’m not saying we couldn’t do it, I’m just wondering why it takes disease and disaster to let us design our own solutions.

]]> By: Nancy Flanagan http://tweenteacher.com/2009/08/12/arne-duncan-and-his-distance-learning-missive/comment-page-1/#comment-3033 Nancy Flanagan Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:24:10 +0000 http://tweenteacher.com/?p=532#comment-3033 Interesting combination of factors here, eh? A kind of Perfect Swine Storm, if you will, to test a number of suppositions: #1) Parents will keep their sick kids home because it's the right, community-responsible thing to do (even if it means losing the crappy, no-benefits job it took them 10 months to find). #2) Teachers will generously reach out to their students at home and teach them as conscientiously as they're teaching the kids at school, because it's the right thing to do. #3) Schools will magically re-think their anti-social networking, anti-cell phone, anti-multiple platform, anti-anything but prescribed, textbook-based curriculum in order to meet kids' needs in crisis, because it's the right thing to do. And some of these items actually conflict with each other. It's time for us to stop assuming that everyone will do the right thing, because we have NO idea what the right thing is. Interesting combination of factors here, eh? A kind of Perfect Swine Storm, if you will, to test a number of suppositions:

#1) Parents will keep their sick kids home because it’s the right, community-responsible thing to do (even if it means losing the crappy, no-benefits job it took them 10 months to find).

#2) Teachers will generously reach out to their students at home and teach them as conscientiously as they’re teaching the kids at school, because it’s the right thing to do.

#3) Schools will magically re-think their anti-social networking, anti-cell phone, anti-multiple platform, anti-anything but prescribed, textbook-based curriculum in order to meet kids’ needs in crisis, because it’s the right thing to do.

And some of these items actually conflict with each other.

It’s time for us to stop assuming that everyone will do the right thing, because we have NO idea what the right thing is.

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