The Special ED kids get to crank out pages of math facts, while the Reg ED’s do the “higher level thinking work.” Keeps one set quiet and the other set busy. Nobody wonders why.

Now we use computers. So what’s new?

Well…..not necessarily in South Oxnard at Hathaway…..

One of the things I note in my teaching “world” in South Oxnard is expansion and contraction.

While at my own home in town and with children I introduce to net cultures there certainly is creative expansion and Sylvia, my 17 year old has shown me she really could write “The American novel” , but then she’d note it’s already out there all over the web……. with this rapid expansion of literacy , it takes your breath.Especially my breath in part due to my dotterage at 47. So much to read and so many forms to say something. Going on-line into blogs alone daily knocks me over. Just your tagging taught me a very new thing, which of course my daughter is showing me in this del.icio.us thing. (And , oh, I love that)That’s oodles of layers of coolness for me. I can categorize, sort, inter-relate and place structure within my work. Just what I wanted…….expanding ideas in my journals and talking.

And then I get around to my school District….back into a place where about 3/4ths of the students have no access to the internet ebven now. My District used to be a leader in this “vision” when Ron Rescigno ran the Hueneme District he recruited my husband specifically for technological expertise. He built a Microsoft School and he channeled all our Title monies into the intrastructure to be something the nation might watch…He was designing a model for building on-line school and he saw this as a way to bring about “equality” in educational advantage. And for the poor there is no doubt that given access , the medium is the message. You have to respect that. Since Dr. Rescigno is gone, in part due to that vision, things fell into the hands of a Director who feared viral contamination and unfettered student contact through the web. And so a program of “control” was instituted. CCC was bought which is also titled ironically Successmaker a kind of giant workbook in a can whereby excessive hours of multiple choice work in “time” leads to more workbook at higher levels until I suppose in theory when kids encounter multiple choice State tests-they do a better job.You know, practice makes perfect. It was billed as “individuazation” and mandated to use we were told by the “Board”.. So now the glossy new lab only ran the not that glossy new workbook. And thus the internet sat…some of us just did our own thing. Some of us…still do. But the expectation is we will show all our computer minutes in the drill and practice. And then teach to the program. Opps they often forget that piece…Another takeover was buying AR (Accelerated Reader) and now Accelerated Math and having it mandated we use these . AR is a test following reading a book so I should be happy for that, but I’d rather see kids writing Fan Fic or responding to other readers or journaling or writing authors or writing reviews on Amazon or a million things that might better demonstrate a working relationship to the book on-line. AC Math is more workbook, without that much to offer. So in effect the computers were hijacked out of the hands of the kids and teachers and into stultifyingly boring skills practice. I didn’t do that last year program much and I won’t do it this year, but one day it’ll catch up to me.THE DAY OF RECKONING. Because I’m pretty sure after watching them block 80% of the sites I find very useful, they soon will block them all. And it’s sad. A contraction of access for the poor.

I always wonder why we don’t check out laptops to these kids. At a tech conference this summer in San Diego it was clear the means to spend a few hundred per child puts them all on.But knowing my work it might mean workbook in a can for home. The only answer I can figure is getting access to kids isn’t a driving force in NCLB reform. And that’s pretty telling to me. Neither is talking about this. I’m pretty sure keeping kids off the internet is the real thought. Look at where the monies are spent and how they are distributed. Certainly not into access for the poor to information and participation.

So my definition of literacy is:
The rich get richer by way of being able to participate in a vast expansion of thought into forms via internet society, the poor get to do rote work by way of their “pathology of poverty”(here fill out this form)…….but I surely thought Ron Rescigno was a visionary leader and at one time my District had a brief expansion of vision about how to bring all children to the literacy table.