Week 2 was full of interesting topics that will help me in the classroom. I created my own wikispaces, so that I can follow the advice from our readings, so I can begin using this tool to see how it works and begin figuring out how to use this tool with students and other educators. I already had a Twitter account setup, for microblogging, but hadn't done to much with it. However, with this week we were tasked with following and tweeting. This combined with looking at websites that discussed the use of Wikis in education was a great opportunity to tweet about these great resources we found.
We also learned about aggregators, so I setup Google Reader to gather updates from the websites that I subscribed to. Setting the Reader up was extremely easy and now I will be able to review updates in a much easier fashion.
As a group, we looked at articles about the use of blogs within school settings. It was interesting to read a variety of view points on the pros and cons of blogging, as well as the safety concerns that schools and teachers need to be aware of. If you haven't read Doug Johnson's article "A Proposal for Banning Pencils" at
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/johnson/johnson004.shtml, you should. It sort of put things in perspective a bit for me!
I agree with the article that there seems to be a problem with allowing students to use technology at school, especially mp3's, ipods, etc. In fact, my son's high school had a policy that these items would be confiscated if they were found in the classrooms, and a parent would have to pick them up. As a teacher, I wouldn't have a problem with students using these devices, as long as they are for educational class purposes and not just for distraction. I think that it will take many more years before schools even come around to accepting any such devices in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the article you posted. My high school has the same policy that Nhia was referring to, and honestly, I feel it is so backwards! I totally agree with Nhia - I'm fine with items like iPods in the classroom as long as they are being used educationally.
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