Guest Commentary: From Blatimore Sun--In Digital Age, Schools That Succeed are Schools That Connect

Shelly Blake-Plock is blogger-in-chief at TeachPaperless.com. He also leads courses in 21st century teaching at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Earlier this month, Blake-Plock and former Washington, D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee were keynote speakers at at conference on the future of technology in education.
"Many teachers I work with each semester wonder how social technology would ever relate to their assignments in cash-strapped Baltimore schools. So, we spend a semester reimagining funding and policy. Last year, one of my students persuaded his principal to let him pilot a tablet program with money that otherwise would have been spent on a more expensive desktop computer lab. Andrew Coy, a teacher at the Digital Harbor High School, has turned an unused room and a few computers into a new media center. But individually, teachers can only do so much,"Blake-Plock wrote in the Baltimore Sun.
"The second crack is evident in those classrooms with technology. The 'access divide' is marked by the blocking of access to the very heart of what resources are available on the Internet, including YouTube, blogs, new media and anywhere a student might actually read a comment. This tends to derive from a ham-fisted approach to digital safety. At a public school conference recently, I found myself struggling to rearrange my live-web multimedia slides because so many were blocked by the district filter," he continued.
"The trickiest of the cracks to get our heads around is the 'connected divide,' separating those who are proficient in collaborative, creative and connected social networks and those who are not. It is growing exponentially wider on a daily basis. From students connecting with authors and scientists via Skype, to kids engaging in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curricula via MIT OpenCourseWare, to students tweeting and conversing with people half a world away in the midst of a revolution (as students at my own school did during the events in Egypt), to teachers participating in daily worldwide discussions on professional development via the #edchat Twitter feed, connectedness will define the value of education over the next generation," Blake-Plock continued
"In the same way social media has changed the face of journalism, politics and entertainment, it will change the face of schools. Just as no business can afford to ignore social media, no school will be able to ignore it. For our students, the value of social media will prove not to be how many followers one has but with how many leaders one engages," he added.
Click here to read his entire essay.