I have what I consider (yet) as a small learning network focused primarily on Buzz Google, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Video Conferencing Internet, Google Reader, RSS, Delicious, and Second Life. I maintain a habit of opening accounts in each new technology or community study appearing even though I know perfectly well that can not participate, I have no time for it.
In fact very often I have to disconnect especially Twitter TweetDeck administered through and ignore the inputs to Google Reader, Google News and everything else. The fact is that I am by nature a lover of learning. Every moment that I have opened my channels learning receive (and perceive) infinity of new knowledge related to my interests and passions: learning, the future of poetry.
In a way I can say I'm an addict. Addicted to life or learning or be better and happier every day. I tired to find (get on my computer) information and new knowledge so much so that I turn off the computer for some period of time "to rest", the trouble is that I have other alternatives, my laptop or phone on the Internet and especially the impressions done everything obsessively can not read online for work purposes.
This is the point. I am a teacher in a public university. I pay for teaching, not learning. I get paid for doing obnoxious and ineffective structure for me to sign a book of access to campus every day, meet academic and administrative paperwork and all the paraphernalia that we know well the teachers who work in public education institutions.
Teachers in universities are old. Before getting a job was to ensure a more or less fixed income for life. Getting the job was the goal, get what they call a "square base", with rights and liabilities incurred by unions and authorities. They could demand more than what was set in a collective bargaining agreement that was corrected and negotiated each year.
teachers we became the education bureaucrats. In a routine follow and obey the guidelines of the education authorities each year. We live in a vertical and authoritarian structure to which we must obey without question. We discuss how to do but not what to do.
Technology has invaded our everyday lives and their presence is visible outside the University and very little inside. Companies in the private sector where there is no collective bargaining agreements and are governed by the efficiency and productivity make use of technologies. In radio and television constantly hear the daily use of microblogging applications, social networks, blogs and more. But
within our universities and educational researchers seem to mostly live in another world in the last century.
Personally I've given up many years ago. It is impossible to change who do not want to change. Not worth it. Teachers reaching retirement age just as they say "surf's muertito, retirement means reducing the family income so it's a strong reason not to think about it. And therefore have no interest in learning new things that have invaded, but they do not understand. Those affected are the students. The world outside the University, a world of formal and informal learning and a high global connectivity penetrate the closed world of University, which looks more like a prison than a teaching center and access to knowledge.
The real problem lies with the new teachers and researchers, young people trained by the old masters of education conservatives to play the educational model at all costs. Young indoctrinated in conservative practices to obey and keep the structure closed, authoritarian and undemocratic that persist in education. This I think is a great challenge to keep alive the educational status through renovation and innovation. Convince and motivate new teachers that we need a real change in the way of carrying out educational practice. For most teachers who live part of our lives working at the University not only hope that we decide to retire from academic life. Unfortunately.
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