I definitely DO agree that a basic level of content filtering in schools is needed and good. (I’m actually a big fan of OpenDNS for home content filtering.) In most US K-12 schools today, however, the content filtering pendulum has swung too far where IT staff members filter for PRODUCTIVITY rather than objectionable content or security risks. CIPA requires that US public and private schools and libraries receiving E-Rate funding filter for objectionable content, but no where does the law say schools must or even should filter web content to try and keep students “on task” in class.

I am possibly just getting a little too Shakespearean (his favourite analogy was warfare) what I am more after is perhaps the title of my countryman Bryce Courtney’s book – ‘The Power of One’.

I don’t believe in one solution – I believe in the notion of ‘wise practice’ (Dr Alan Walker HKU) – that is ‘best practice contextualised within individual schools’. The only way that the recontextualising will occur is through ‘collaboration’ – or letting the ‘wisdom of the crowd free’.

Cheers

Gilbert

I continue to “rethink the game plan” as you suggest. As I’ve written and said before, the tools we have at our fingertips now are far more powerful than those possessed by educational reformers at any other point in prior human history. That can, should, and will (I predict) make a BIG difference. No one need be an island.

I do like the passion you share in asking rhetorically if we should be “an army of one,” but the problem I have with that motto in the context of school reform is that it suggests a single path forward. While I agree conversations with individuals are the only viable path forward to change and win hearts and minds, I also believe the learning revolution will look different and should look different in our schools. We are moving away from a factory mindset of rigor and a single track for everyone, to a learning culture of high expectations, differentiation, and choices. So that is why I’m not sure about an “Army of One” motto. The idea of putting our collective voices together to advocate for change is VERY strong, however. The key we must focus on is, WHAT TYPE of change? We have lots of voices “out here” and in the mainstream press advocating for change, but some of those appear on the surface to advocate for change when in fact they are staunch defenders of the status quo. Sorting out the real change advocates from the pretenders is a key challenge in our present “learning revolution” struggle.

Let’s face facts this is a street fight folks – the analogy could not be clearer; the epiphany hits as I write. We are a cult who have already embraced what others – haven’t seen, can not see or refuse to see. We fight colleague by colleague, year group by year group, department by department and school by school

We preach an alternative code – few of us are half-heart about it – because when you realise the mismatch between current education practice and, well . . . ‘reality’ - it comes in an all consuming rush!

While some may find the comparison distasteful – I can not see more appropriate social phenomena comparison than that of a terrorist organisation or freedom fighters (It is all a question of perspective).

I have probably just ‘spiked a few bots’ in homeland security database stateside. At least here in HK I’m fine because they are too busy stopping people coming in to protest about Tibet (Oh now I’ve gone and got on the PLA watch list as well).

We seek solace from the ‘great unwashed’. in the blogs, sites, conferences and reaffirming global projects of our brethren. We salve our wounds and exhaustion in baths of like mindedness. Anyone seeing a pattern emerging here?

I’m reading Tom Peter’s ‘Re-Imagine!’ and he speaks at length about who the US military redefined itself after 911– obviously his insight are corporately directed- but there is much in there for us educators as well.

The current motto of the US army is ‘The Army of One’. Shall that not be our battle cry ‘The School of one’?

Because I am ‘A School of One’ with the opportunity to connected to you all, your collective wisdom, your support and our collaborative abilities to solve the problems we face in the analogue world as we attempt to shift the paradigm.

I am sorry Wes to have turned this comment into a post (I’m new to this blogging thing) but you ask were you confrontational? I think no, but one person’s carrot is another’s stick.

The revelation of your post for me is that you, who nearly always write, present and lecture to supposed ‘agents of change’ in our schools, engage so passionately with a single practitioner.

See I saw the war like this; we were nation with technology on our side against a nation of ‘luddites and late-adopters’ and that was about ‘nuclear bombs of rationality and evidence’ that would force cessation of conflict.

No I realise we are an aberrant group within the general population and we live with, respect and even love our enemy. We fight person by person. This is the way of advocacy that I know many speak of. I suggest that for the sake of our students, advocacy needs perhaps to move to zealot, with a marketing degree (always with a marketing degree).

Rethink the game plan.

Better to convince one colleague in the trenches than 1000 Power Points telling the generals they are wrong.