Web 2.0 Chapter 2: students and learning

Since this chapter is jammed packed with a lot of valuable information, I will choose a few items to discuss.

As future teachers, I agree that we need to effectively “integrate technology into student learning (pg. 31).” The question is how to integrate the technology effectively without hindering other important forms of learning. Just the thought of learning these new tools well enough to incorporate them in a classroom setting frightens me a bit, however, I like the challenge it presents.

Knowing students come to school comfortable using the Internet and “knowledgeable about the web and its potential (pg. 31),” how knowledgeable are they? Do they have all the knowledge necessary to use the web to its fullest potential? Can the students effectively use the right procedures to safely use and evaluate what they discover on the web? Depending on each student’s prior knowledge and uniqueness, some may or may not know the procedures needed to safely use the Internet. That is where our role as educators comes into play. We should teach and model how to process and use information they come across wisely. By doing so, it allows us to grow as professionals and students to grow as learners.

Although there are many challenges faced by educators, one of the most prominent is standardized testing. Since the result on standardized testing sadly determines the amount of success educators have, it is hard to go beyond the traditional ways of teaching. This leads to “teaching to the test” which presents some danger of “narrowing instruction to the exclusion of anything more than test materials and “one is not measuring what really matters even if it will matter in the future (pg. 41).” This also leaves teachers who want to use technology in their classrooms in a bind. As a future teacher I know I will face the same situation, but I hope that I will be able take the challenge and find ways to support- in depth learning and increase students learning while providing them with skills to do well on standardized test. Many web 2.0 tools and resources can be helpful in doing so, but getting the administration and others to branch out and look beyond the cover of a book, so to speak, presents a whole other challenge.

I think teaching is an art. It requires a lot of hard work and skills among other things, but we can do it!!

Web 2.0 Chapter 1: new world, new web, new skills

WOW! Technology has come a long way since the early days. While I was helping some Senior Saints log on to a computer to check their email, I wondered if they ever thought that computers would be used as a main source of communication instead of writing letters or phoning.

In addition, I remember teachers mostly used overhead projectors and chalk boards to give notes. Now they use white boards and SmartBoards. I substitute taught in a pre-K classroom where the students interacted with a Smartboard. It made sense after I thought about it, but I couldn’t believe that pre-K students were able to interact with a SmartBoard with the help of the teacher. Who would have thought a few years ago that we would have access to this type of technology? We even have access to eBooks and can take classes online, something that I just learned about within the last five or six years.

On to the text for today and not trying to point out flaws or pick on a county, I came across a section stating that China is refocusing history textbooks from “wars, dynasties, and revolutions to economics, technology, social customs, and globalization.” While I can see some of the logic behind the reasoning for doing so, this statement made me wonder how much of future textbooks will leave out important historical facts, ideas and themes that are not only fundamental to ones understanding of local history, but also essential to an understanding of global history? How will they create textbooks that cover the important material while adding the current revolutions of today’s world? The sentence following this statement says that an author of new textbooks states that alterations, “‘reflect a sea of change in thinking about what students need to know…The goal of our work… is to make the study of history more mainstream and prepare our students for a new era.’” Also being able to see some reasoning behind this statement, however, by making textbooks cover what students “need to know” who is going to make the decision about what students “need” to know and will those decisions be skewed or based on a consensus? And by preparing them for a “new era”, will students inquire a schema that will be holistic in thought or skewed in some way?

In light of all these questions, I would like to hope these textbooks would integrate material and information that would allow students to learn skill sets needed to advance their personal knowledge in all areas,inclusive of technology, and apply them to advance the ever changing world in which they will live.