From Faculty Academy 2007 Wiki
"Change and the 21st‑Century College Teacher: Deep Learning, Slow Blogging and the Tensions of Web 2.0"
- Barbara Ganley, Middlebury College
In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes: “Many teachers who do not have difficulty releasing old ideas, embracing new ways of thinking, may still be as resolutely attached to the old ways of practicing teaching as their more conservative colleagues. That’s a crucial issue. Even those of us experimenting with progressive pedagogical practices are afraid to change.” Have we, teachers who are busily exploring Web 2.0 practices in our classrooms, really asked ourselves if and how we are shifting our teaching practices to meet the challenges of fluid learningscapes? Or are we actually continuing to do what we have always done, teaching as we were taught, with technology as conduit or appendage? Has anything really changed in the classroom dynamic, in the ways students participate in every aspect of their learning from design to evaluation? This talk will explore how now that informal learning has taken root online and off in what James Paul Gee calls “affinity spaces,” exposing the deep fissures in our factory‑model educational system, we have the chance to open up the classroom, making it more equitable and vibrant, grounding it deeply within experience and community. But only if we are willing to come to terms with the fact that everything is in flux in the Web 2.0 classroom, which necessitates a move beyond traditional teaching practices including our notions of evaluation and learning outcomes, of syllabus and assignments, of teacher and student roles.
