This summer I finished reading "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. These books complement each other in that they both look at trends from different vantage points. The former from a more statistical point of view and the latter a more sociological.

There are many great ideas in both these books, but something that really struck me in Gladwell's book was his example of the diffusion model. Gladwell used the example of farmers acceptance of an innovation – a new hybrid seed corn – and different characteristics that farmers engendered. I thought that this might be simple way to look at the acceptance of educational technology, and my own perceptions on where we are right now. We still have a long way to go.

The diffusion model breaks down adopters of an innovation into the following characteristics.

Innovators – Those educators, who might be considered the adventurous ones, the risk takers of our profession.

Early Adopters – Educators who were infected by the innovators. This group includes the opinion leaders who watched and analyzed what the innovators were doing. This is a slightly larger group.

Early Majority – The large group of educators who follow the early adopters.

Late Majority – The deliberate and skeptical masses that would not try anything until the most respected educators had tried it first.

Laggards - The most traditional educators of all, and see no urgent reason to change.

Unfortunately, a blanket statement about innovation around the read/write web would not apply to all schools, school districts or regions. This is also an oversimplification of an innovation that includes many complexities, which are not accounted for in this model.

As an educational community at large, I still think we are at the innovator stage, with some small breaks into the early adopters area, but these breaks are few and far between.

Here are a few questions to ponder are:

1. Do you use a blog, wiki or other internet based collaborative technologies with your students? Or yourself?
2. Where would you place yourself in this model with regards to the read/write web?
3. Where would you place your school? district? province/state? country? initiatives around the read/write web?

Thanks to a friend of mine at the Trillium Lakeland District School Board in Ontario (the province where I teach), who recently informed me that this web site (blog, wiki and all the resources) has been blocked from educator access.  She told me that the filtering software blocks out the word 'Hackers', and I guess all variations.  

I submitted the following email to the school Information Technology System Administrator through their contact form:

"Dear System Administrator,

I was told by one of your staff members that TeachingHacks.com has been blocked by your board Internet filtering software.  It is obvious that my web site was never visited by the company that runs the filtering software since the whole point of the web site is to promote the appropriate use of Educational Technology in our classrooms.

I am disappointed, being an Ontario educator, and an advocate for the use of technology, that web sites such as mine are blocked out of convenience.  I am requesting that you unblock my web site to your educational staff.
Thanks for your time,

http://www.TeachingHacks.com"

 
I have worked hard to create and share resources for other educators to use and it gets blocked by the people who are supposed to be promoting educational technology, in my own province.  This just blows my mind!   Now, I have to wonder, how many other school boards have banned the resources that are available here?