Will Richardson

Will Richardson
Change Agent
Published Online: October 11, 2010
Published in Print: October 12, 2010, as Change Agent
http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2010/10/12/01richardson.h04.html?cmp=clp-edweek


I found Will Richardson’s interview very challenging. I have, as I said above, used digital technology as a tool. I have eschewed social networking for employment and philosophical reasons and I have only a small and disorganized online profile. This is because most of my writing continues to be aimed at the print medium. My blog is largely anonymous and concerned with University studies.

I can see Richardson’s point but I need to ask how one fits in creating this online presence and joining learning or professional networks with the expanding demands that digital communications have placed upon our time.

I find it very frustrating that I cannot find suitable resources on the web for different ages and subjects that I teach or support but by the time I have exhausted that search I don’t feel that I have the time to create what is required. Even with Moodle these tend to end up “works-in-progress” rather than finished products.

I also see that Richardson supports teaching hypertext. There was a time when it was suggested that all students should learn a computer language as their second language, just as there was (and in some places, continues to be) an insistence on students learning or attempting to learn touch typing. Just as knowing Basic, Pascal and even machine language is no longer central to being able to use a computer, I wonder whether hypertext will also become superfluous to the effective use of computers for creative purposes.

Apart from universal applications such as email, desktop publishing, marking spreadsheets and school databases, teachers are most likely to become competent if nor masters at specialist software related to their domain: art, photography, CAD, music and so on. Such programs provide web accessibility, which makes them useful for students to share, compare and evaluate the work of others and, in turn, to display their own work. However, their main working environment is based on individual machines.

Finally, schools face or have created their own series of obstacles to e-learning, as any teacher who has tried to log on a Year 3 or 4 class to the school intranet, let alone allow them access to the wide world of the internet knows that we are a long way from reproducing the social experience of Web 2.0 outside school or making digital learning a seamless part of the school day.