yep. i think many of us who are now either out of school or behind the teacher’s desk tend to assume that the mission of schooling is timeless, and that, as ever (an assumption based on questionable premises in any era but particularly recently) schools are still going about their jobs preparing students for life outside the classroom walls. instead, the whole construct of the classroom is becoming increasingly obsolete and removed from not only the technologies but the entire skill set required by the working world. sitting quietly in your desk and waiting to be asked to speak looks not so hott on the resume, these days. the emperor is naked, and the students are starting to notice.

and yet, i can completely understand how, for individual teachers trying to do their best in a particular classroom with particular subject material, the presence of cellphones or “two way communication devices” can be at best, distracting. i’ve always been hostile to phones in my classrooms…but not necessarily to the forms of communication they represent. that’s what i’m wondering about in the Milwaukee situation. in banning the devices, what are they assuming the impact will be in the classroom? simply more focused students with less instant messaging going on, or are they hoping for a paradigm re-set entirely?

i think the students left us a lot of us behind awhile ago. and as long as we expect to be the knowers in an old-school model of learning, we’ll never get back into the conversation again.