Hopes for I.T. Masters

On entering the IT Masters program, I must admit that I am coming in a little bit of a skeptic.

This is not to say that I do not believe in the power of the internet, or that I am in any way a techno-phobe.

The opposite is true. I feel that throughout each mach advent of new communitcation technology, I have been an early adapter. Email in 1992. Blogging in 2001. Skype when there was no one to skype with. MySpace. Facebook. Ning. Moodle...

I think this stuff is powerful.

But.

I have been an disbeliever in fully integrating into education. This skeptisism was strengthened at the Tech2.008 conferenece in ShangHai where classroom after classroom was filled with people tuning out their presenters, cell phones ringing, twitters twittering, and wikis chatting.

Teaching teachers is not an easy job. Teachers (in my experience) make erogant, overly critical, disrespectful, and generally lousy students. That said, in my opinion, Tech 2.008 didn't look like learning.

What I want from this course is to be convinced.

Convinced of a different way of looking at what was happening in the classrooms in ShangHai.

Convinced of the idea that is at the heart of school: learning and socialization. The internet is an avenue for both, but are the two sides of school simultaniously compatible?!?!...