Chapters 2 & 3

I know I went from “Prologue” (my first post below, checking to see that all functioned smoothly) to Chapters 2 & 3. But that’s the fast-paced life of grad school. Gotta keep up or you miss something!

Or, in my case, Chapter One was not an assignment.

Down to business:

My English class is reading Will Richardson’s book about using technology – particularly, internet technology – in the classroom. He encourages teachers to embrace tools already familiar to most teenagers. Students speak fluently in Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Podcast, Wiki, & Blog….so their educators should work toward becoming fluent in these 21st century “languages” as well.

One key distinction Richardson makes in discussing these tools is their social use versus their educational use. Currently, the vast majority of these teenagers fall into the ‘social use’ category. They blog, facebook, & tweet about the crazy homeroom teacher, who is taking whom to prom, the big game on Friday night, and their woeful, annoying  parents. Thus, part of a teacher’s job includes guiding students away from the minutae of their high school life toward the vast world available to them on the world wide web.

Here are some ideas Richardson puts forth & my take on them:

• Creating a Class Wesite with a Blog: I think this is an excellent idea, especially his point that publishing homework, handouts, assignments, etc to the web eliminates a LOT of wasted time & energy spent hunting for lost papers or printing new ones. Speaking from personal experience as a student, it is extremely handy to have an online resource for a class (be it WebCT or TeacherWeb or a blog or whatnot). If you’re a worrier like me, it helps to see in print that an assignment really isn’t due until next week.
• The Blog as a Filing Cabinet/E-Portfolio: My criticism of this stems from a privacy issue. Quite simply, some students do not want every piece of work to be posted in a public place. Even if it’s just a basic literary essay about, say, Huck Finn, a teacher reading & commenting on the writing is very different from peers – or even strangers – reading & commenting. Because some students could be very shy about this aspect of blogging, I would hesitate to use blogs as a portfolio venue unless they were accessible only by the teacher and the individual student. Thoughts on this?
• Collaborative Space: One of the best benefits of blogging, in my opinion. I love the possibility of interacting with “primary sources,” like the authors of classroom books. What a neat experience that would be! Additionally, Richardson points out that with the internet, physical space is not a limitation – you could potentially communicate with anyone, anywhere. Puts a new spin on international pen pals!   In all seriousness, the implications of this technology are, as the author says many times, limitless. Imagine how you grow personally when you travel to another country and talk to people there; now, students could gain that benefit of international discussion without paying for an international plane ticket!
• School/Club Website: Not much to say here, except that a blog could indeed be useful for keeping more up-to-date information, as Richardson points out. The job of managing a school-wide blog might be time-consuming, though.

One final note on what Richardson terms “connective writing.” I believe this to be the heart of blogging – continually analyzing and re-analyzing your own thoughts, beliefs, and knowledge as you engage in dialogue with fellow citizens. It forces a deeper level of critical thinking & honing of writing/communicating skill…something every student (and teacher) could benefit from.

PS – Did you know that 2 new blogs are created every second? I didn’t until I read Richardson’s book. Crazy. So in the time it took me to write this post, roughly 10,800 blogs were born…..

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