student resistance to change.

It looks like I'm averaging one post a week. That may be more manageable than once a day. I guess I'm losing the excitement that the beginning of the year and am becoming bogged down with all that comes in the middle of the year--progress grades, student behavior intervention, student academic intervention, final papers for grad school, NHS projects, meetings, and scoring the Eagle Basketball team.

This post I want to think about students' resistance to using technology. They come into class early to get onto YouTube to watch some anime, but ask them to sign up for a mindmeister account or post on the blog and they suddenly become very digitally illiterate..."which button do I push?"..."what do I do now?".....You would think that they left their brains in their lockers. They have signed up for myspace and youtube and countless other programs....but they can't remember their password for their school email or get through the process of setting up a blog.

How much am I expected to scaffold this?

Its still early in the semester and they are very used to teacher centered classrooms. I've had them request lectures (not that they actually sit through them). They are more afraid of technology than my hall-neighbor who is retiring next year. I think part of it is that they don't want to look dumb and they don't want to work or think to hard.....and using technology requires some brain activity...unlike copying passages out of a text book (which they excel at).

I'll provide more opportunities for practice and to just "play" with the technology so its not so scary.....