We had a very interesting discussion about ethics in our PE3 class today. Our teacher showed us a couple of case studies and asked our opinion. One of the case studies referred to copying software to use in the classroom if your budget is limited. It was basically asking us if we would overlook the law in order to provide the best for our students.
This one question divided the class but not equally. Interestingly only a few people said they would not copy the software even if they felt their students were being disadvantaged.
I was one of the few.
This is not something that I need to even think about - it has come up many times in the past in my life in regard to DVD and CD and PC game copying in particular. And a much as I think sometimes the really large companies out there are making a fortune from sales, I have to think about the author or artist or owner of the information, words or music.
However, my good friend Kate did question me about other things such as pictures for this blog, or print outs from the internet for practicum, it is certainly something the think about...where do you draw the line?
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It is always hard to get back into university life after having a long break, in this case our three week practicum, then you add to it being 9am on a cold Monday and well it wasn't looking good. Then our guest lecturer began to speak and the morning got a little brighter! I am not writing this post to suck up (grin) but merely to highlight the fact that if you have an interested teacher standing out front who is engaging you in conversation then you are going to learn.
In class on Monday, we looked at the concept of the digital divide - what is a digital divide? The class brainstormed and came up with the following ideas just to name a few...
- have versus have not
- understand versus no idea
- face 2 face versus digital
- innovators versus resistors
- boy versus girl
It was interesting to think about my practicum school in light of these issues but also think about my children's school. Where do they fit in this comparison and where do I fit in - am I a resistor? I hope not, I hope that my practicum experience will spur me on to learn more, not only more tools but more ways to utilise them and to enhance the learning experience of my future students.
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Sometimes you go forth thinking that you will be able to use what you have been learning only to be halted by outside forces. I felt a bit this way with my practicum. My class, in fact the school, I was attending was not very tech savvy, sure they had the 'appliances' but they really did not put them to use, good or bad!
My classroom had an IWB and three computers, they even had computer monitors (as in students that were part of the class jobs roster) to start up the computers every day, however I never saw them used, the computers that is and my cooperating teacher only used the IWB once the whole time I was there.
After being so fired up about Web 2.0 and all the tools available to us as pre-service teachers, it was disappointing to see the tools of this school going to waste.
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Well I have started prac, I have a lovely cooperating teacher and a class full of lively 7 year olds. Day 1 - Observation and the kids had their computer class which I was excited to see but sadly very disappointed with how the class was run and what the kids actually got to do - not much. I am starting to see that we as future teachers are going to have to push hard to make ICT a better learning experience for our students. Something more than log on, click here, finish up and sit on the mat!
The upside is there is a IWB in the classroom - the downside is I have not seen it used yet. I really hope that next week I get to see some ICT used effectively in the classroom and maybe work with the kids on something fun and interactive.
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