Friday, July 20, 2007

text reflection 1

Hi everyone. I wrote this a few days ago on paper but didn't get a chance to post it because I was skydiving in Alberta for the last few days. Anyway as I've been reading the book I'm happy that there are lot of commonalities between the text and the videos that we looked at earlier. Or at least a lot of the things I got from those videos are being talked about again in the text. Some of these comments were made in my first blog, on how a teachers role is changing from the "know all " to the "guide all" and this change is exciting. How weblogs are the connection to anyone around the world puts more investment in the students and the (positive) responses will invest a child even more. Wikis being a collaboration on the web of information, which I didn't know only a couple of weeks ago. And my thoughts on digital portfolios is being reinstalled throughout the beginning chapters of the text.
I think the most compelling part is that of security. If we as teachers, talk to parents about posting on the web, creating wikis, weblogs and podcasts. And that all this information is going to be there for them to look at and browse at during their leisure. We have to make sure that there is no question in anybodies mind about security or the lack there of. I personally like the idea of giving the students an individual number so it seperates all the kids. Then at your first parent teacher conference you can give the respective parent their childs number and say to them that the entire class will be posting only as a number So if only the parent and the teacher know what number corresponds to what child then that solves a couple of problems. Firstly personal identity because no one will no the identity of the student. And secondly parents can go and look at their child's work and look at the rest of the class. providing some valuable comparisons to the parent. And in my experience lots of parents want to see how their child compares to others in the class.
I want to end with a quote I found in the first chapter that further emphasizes that the role of teachers is changing. "...people, especially young people, continue to learn-and to adopt new media- but institutions, and those who run them, are much slower to change their ways" [W. Richardson pg7 (Rheingold, 2004)]. This is compared to a gap that is widening between education and schooling, but I think we can take the new technologies partnered with our new ways of teaching and start minimizing that gap if not closing all together. Brian Nenson 3rd yr Ed student.

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