iPods? How Embarrassing
April 7th, 2007 | by christine |Well the Democrats have finally come up with something that I can’t explain, defend, spin, or swallow.
I have a friend who specializes in educational technology. Maybe she can explain it to me.
6 Responses to “iPods? How Embarrassing”
By wizardkitten on Apr 7, 2007 | Reply
Gun, meet foot.
I weep for my state.
By Kay Lauro on Apr 7, 2007 | Reply
Does this mean we are really, really screwed?
By cew on Apr 7, 2007 | Reply
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and he will not depart from it.”
Public education used to create “good workers.” (admittedly not a high bar) Now, at the risk of sounding totally cynical…they are aiming to create “good consumers with an appetite for novelty.” John Dewey, Jane Hull, and Einstein–none of them had iPods and did just fine.
By wizardkitten on Apr 8, 2007 | Reply
As of Sunday morning, this post is currently number 4 on the “most clicked headlines” at Lefty Blogs. I have a screenshot if you want it.
Not sure if we should be proud of this or not… :-p
The sad thing is- the point of all the legislation is lost on one bad turn of a phrase- substitute “modern education technology” for “iPod”- and none of this happens.
By christine on Apr 8, 2007 | Reply
Told you it was a slow news night.
I have a friend who works in educational technology … I’m going to talk to her next week and ask what she thinks of all this.
As I said somewhere in the forums, I’d be ok with putting PDAs into public schools, because that’s been done successfully in other places. The entire school can go wireless, doing all homework and research via the wireless network. I think that’s great. However I don’t think iPods have that kind of capability.
Also you can’t put them in every school. Many schools wouldn’t be able to control the use of them or integrate them properly into the curriculum. So it should be targeted schools, not all of them.
Also I’d prefer to see this done in 3 or 4 years, and not when we’re cutting things like Meals on Wheels.
By wizardkitten on Apr 8, 2007 | Reply
Me too. While I understand where they are going with this, integrating technology in the schools, etc, I can’t get over the incredibly bad strategic blunders they continue to make.
Already the foam-at-the-mouth, think small crowd at the Freep is seizing on this and ignoring everything else, and once again the focus is off the Republican alternative of really deep, hurtful cuts and back on what is perceived as wasteful government spending.
In one fell swoop they wiped out the whole frame.
I know, I should stay away from the Freep. But still, the point stands. This was a really big fumble, and it’s going to be hard to recover from it.
* sigh *
Onward and upward. Everything blows over eventually.