Rethinking Schools articles

McFarlane, S. H. (2008). The laptops are coming! The laptops are coming! What am I
learning from my school’s infatuation with computers. Rethinking Schools, 22, 22-26.

This regular classroom teacher shares her mostly stressful experiences with laptops for each student in her school (the new trend in schools nowadays). Her experiences sound like ours in our school district. The positives are there but not without their complications and side effects, as we have seen in our district. The issue of power seemed to be bothering her (and me) a lot. I liked that this teacher was concerned about justice, equality, analytical/critical thinking, values on relationships that teachers and students should be concerned about also. The questions she provided as” notes for next time” shows her critical pedagogy, which I would not mind sharing with my co-workers with her permission of course. The information she shared was like she was talking about our students. So this was good to see that we were not the only ones going through this dilemma. She’s keeping it real, just the way I like it. No pretentiousness here. Is she a jewel in a haystack?

Garcia, A. (2008). Rethinking myspace Using social networking tools to connect with
students. Rethinking Schools, 22, 27-29.

Garcia’s diary like format touched on some serious issues involving MySpace in education. The one important fact is that this a way to extend class outside of the classroom. Another fact that I’ve found to be repeating itself concerning the web is the issue of power/justice/equity. It can be seen that Garcia believes in critical thinking and pedagogy, which can be seen in his “hope to sway students to use MySpace to spread messages and bulletins to fellow classmates- to take “ownership” of the mass media and to use MySpace to create a difference in the school atmosphere (p.29).”
Obviously the Internet can be a powerful tool for intermediate, middle, and high school teachers who have a critical pedagogy and believe in critical thinking.
Finally, I feel that I understand this program clearer (especially since I still haven’t created a MySpace for myself yet, because of the old excuse of paranoia of identity theft and the real excuse of lack of time- for now.).