Reflection on Valenza and Johnson's article - week 3

Valenza and Johnson bring up some very good points in their article, but a couple points particularly stood out for me:

- "National expectations that ignore critical learning skills" (Valenza and Johnson 2009) - This is how a lot of teachers feel - how can we be expected to engage our students in authentic learning experiences, when we still have to worry about getting them ready for provincial exams (grade 10s in particular)?

This is where I think Valenza and Johnson understand the issue a bit more than Prensky does. They seem to recognize it as a "national standard" issue, not a teacher issue. Does it make the situation better? No, of course not. All I'm saying is our hands are tied to a certain degree because of curricular demands and provincial exams. But with that said, I think many teachers make an effort to incorporate critical thinking into their lessons.

- "realizing that Internet access is an intellectual freedom issue" (Valenza and Johnson 2009) - I found this really interesting because I never considered Facebook bans as a possible violation of intellectual freedoms...something I definitely need to think more about.

It's a bit ironic to read this in the same week that I find out from a colleague that our school board is thinking of banning teachers from having Facebook accounts and posting videos onto YouTube.

Now, I'm not completely sure if this is true or just gossip gone terrbily wrong...but just the thought of them banning me from Facebook when I haven't done anything to merit such a reaction really peeves me a little.

So when I hear this bit of information and then read about us needing to fight for access to these social networking tools...it makes me doubt our fight will stand even the smallest chance!