It’s been about 2 weeks since I got the new tellraven.us domain online for my classroom Community Writing Project. I’m not calling it a classroom blogging site because the kids don’t know what blogging is. They’re writing, though. And how! They’re jazzed to be writing for each other and the few outsiders who’ve left comments.

I’m not an outlaw, but I would be if there was a law. I was amused to see this post from Miguel about outlawing unsanctioned technology tools in school. My amusement was with the coincidence, not the subject matter. I saw it the same day that I got the class project set up on its new domain. Miguel said that districts might want to reserve “the right to ban the use of non-school related tools and/or evaluate their efficacy in K-12 settings on a case by case basis,” and though I like the case-by-case basis part, and I don’t dispute anyone’s right to dictate what their network should be used for, I don’t feel particularly in synch with district technology uses. So if push ever comes to shove, I’m not confident about how my case will shake out.

Last year I requested and was allowed access to a server for a class blog site. This year I found that the site had been removed. I was a little bit unnerved, thinking that I’d maybe done something ‘they’ viewed as wrong. (See the power dynamic here?) What I learned, though, is that the system admin had dropped the database because the server was “repurposed.” Boom! Gone! He was apologetic. With a stroke, my project was belly-up. More discussion…the system admin assured me he’d work on getting a new server online. We talked about the application I would run. The set-up was expected to come together in December. While I waited for the web server I taught my students how to type with both hands. Every kid can type now, and they can save their work by downloading to a file server on our building network. This, I think, is a giant step for fourth-graders.

In January I wanted to move forward and get students involved in something more dynamic than saving stories to a file server, so I put a Drupal site up on a subdomain at northernattitude.org but I didn’t like having my students’ work near my weblog. I saw an offer of free web space for education projects at Lunarpages K-12 Education Program (US teachers only, it looks like.) and sent an email inquiring about it. I got an immediate response, ran it by my supervisor, and in two days I had a free domain. It was absolutely painless.

What’s going on here? The school district appears to be headed in a completely other direction from me. I know that there are sympathetic technologists downtown, but there are competing forces in play. I got a Professional Development Input Form handed me the other day. I was to put check marks next to the topics I am interested in.

Under the heading: Technology: Ways to integrate technology with instruction:
Learn how teachers are managing student learning with the help of computer technology.

Under Technology: My students know more about this computer program than I do:
District tech-types will help walk you through specific software programs: PLATO, Accelerated Reader, Accelerated Math, Larson’s Math, etc.

Note to all: these software applications will NOT help integrate technology with instruction-they will encourage technology to displace instruction. To my way of thinking, this is a disruptive use of technology, sanctioned by the administration, that is anti-educational. The use of computers to deliver and monitor drills and exercises is an abuse of people and machines, debasing them both, disempowering teachers, and students, promoting an uncritical submissiveness to the power of Technology. If we are going to expand minds with information technology, we need to avoid placing students in a submissive posture around computers. They should be learning to drive them, not be driven. There were no choices that I was interested in. I had no box to check.

More evidence of my out-of-steppedness: I got this letter from my daughter’s middle school principal.

Thank you for helping with the pilot testing of Centerpoint…[our] new student information system.

As a pilot parent tester of Centerpoint, your use…will better help us prepare for our phased implementation of the new system for use by all secondary school students…and for elementary schools soon thereafter.

What is Centerpoint?
…a secure web-based student information management system where you can quickly check grades assignments, attendance, the school calendar, student progress, communicate with teachers and set up automatic email alerts regarding attendance, missing assignments and progress reports. As parents using Centerpoint, you will have 24/7 communication link to your student’s performance and attendance.

Why, I ask is this needed? I can think of only one reason. Parents are unable to communicate with the younger human beings, the students, in their own homes who have direct access to all of this school information and should be learning to manage it themselves. The network for these analog datatypes has existed for decades, but has lately broken down, apparently. Mind you, I am not placing any value judgments on the nature of that information, (worthless for the most part though it may be which may, in fact be the problem, and if so, Centerpoint will not be of much use). We are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and God knows how much time and energy to bypass the obvious links between home and school that students were formerly responsible for. If evidence of a broken system is wanted, look no further. But you must also recognize that it is not only the Education System that seems to be broken. The Family System is ailing, as well. Students are being systematically absolved of the need to participate in their own education, and parents might actually *buy* this! If the District High Priests of Technology are monitoring this blog. Hear me now: God Help Us!

My little writing project does not represent nearly the hazard to students that the institutional steamroller is prepared to deliver. I wish that I could “reserve the right to ban the use of inhuman tools and/or evaluate their efficacy in K-12 settings on a case by case basis.” We would immediately cease the practice of measuring and grading young children, as inefficacious, coercive, and immoral a use of technology as any.

Technology is limited and defined by our imaginations, which determine how things are deployed. Our imaginations are limited by narratives worn thin through constant retelling. To realize the great potential of our human spirit we need to consciously and courageously break with the narratives of fear and mistrust. They are the matrix for confusion and conflict.

My question for the authors of this twisted text: Whose ’system’ was it intended to be? And whose ends does it now serve?