I have been an educator for nine years. Every year I find myself trying to find ways to professionally develop myself in areas that I feel I need more growth. The professionsal development offered in my building is solely based on what we need to know in terms of the curriculum. This is helpful but I need more! In order to get the extra support I have started to utilize the internet. I have stumpled upon blogs that have helped me to create more engageing lessons for my students and myself. Blogs allow me the opportunity to listen and learn from fellow educators who struggled to teach the same lessons and have found success. Thats what I need to help me evolve as an educator. Blogs provide the opportunity to collaborate with other teachers from all over the world. Its refreshing to know that there is a place I can go to to get help when I feel that I am stuggling on my own to create meaningful lessons or alternative ways of teaching the curriculum.
The article was also helpful in that it provided me with steps to creating a blog myself. This is something that I am interested in doing for my school community. I do feel that many teachers in my building might be reluctant to utilize a blog but it wouldn't hurt to try. Creating a blog could push the teachers in my building to want to learn more about how to intergrate technology into their classrooms. I am also interested in creating a class blog for my fourth grade class. This is a goal I have set for myself and I hope to attain. I have to do some research first!
Showing posts with label response to "Learning with Blogs and Wikis". Show all posts
Showing posts with label response to "Learning with Blogs and Wikis". Show all posts
Sunday, September 19, 2010
response to "Learning with Blogs and Wikis"
Posted by Chiara Nakashian
In his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond discusses how the youth of America have fallen victim to the new phenomenon of passive entertainment. He discusses how children today are constantly being bombarded with entertainment in the form of movies, radio, television, the internet, etc., and the passivity can lead to stunting a child's development due to reduced stimulation.
In my opinion, I don't see passive entertainment as necessarily a negative thing; movies, radio, television, and the internet is apart of our society and is most definitely here to stay. Instead, what is negative is the fact that our educational system has not yet caught up to passive entertainment. As Ferriter points out, there are very effective ways to incorporate technology into a classroom and in doing so, these children--who are not victims, but instead products of the technological age--can learn in the classroom via the same technological modes that are entertaining them outside of the classroom. The world is changing, thus so too should education.
However, as Ferriter also points out, due to the hostile and inhospitable adult learning environemnts within schools (paired with many educator's reluctance and fear of changing teaching practices), little change is actually taking place in education when it comes to the incorporation of technology. And or course the ones who are hurt most by this inability to change are the students. Ferriter accurately states, "All these [technological] skills are essential for students to succeed in the most progressive workplaces today and the most common workplaces tomorrow, in which corporations open their companies and encourage digital collaboration across borders, primarily because they recognize that the human capital beyond an organization will always be greater than the human capital within." Without these skills, a person's chances of life success drop drastically.
Of course, there are some schools and teachers out there who do have the resources and ability to bring technology to life inside the classroom. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, most of these schools are those in high-income areas that can afford these technologies. The school that I work at is in a low-income area and we simply do not have the monitary resources to purchase the expensive equipment necessary. So I leave you all with this question: taking into account the growing disparities between the low and high-income school districts in regard to technology, in addition to Ferriter's quote about technological skills being necessary for success in today's progressive workplaces, do you think that technology can ultimately widen the gap in education?
In his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond discusses how the youth of America have fallen victim to the new phenomenon of passive entertainment. He discusses how children today are constantly being bombarded with entertainment in the form of movies, radio, television, the internet, etc., and the passivity can lead to stunting a child's development due to reduced stimulation.
In my opinion, I don't see passive entertainment as necessarily a negative thing; movies, radio, television, and the internet is apart of our society and is most definitely here to stay. Instead, what is negative is the fact that our educational system has not yet caught up to passive entertainment. As Ferriter points out, there are very effective ways to incorporate technology into a classroom and in doing so, these children--who are not victims, but instead products of the technological age--can learn in the classroom via the same technological modes that are entertaining them outside of the classroom. The world is changing, thus so too should education.
However, as Ferriter also points out, due to the hostile and inhospitable adult learning environemnts within schools (paired with many educator's reluctance and fear of changing teaching practices), little change is actually taking place in education when it comes to the incorporation of technology. And or course the ones who are hurt most by this inability to change are the students. Ferriter accurately states, "All these [technological] skills are essential for students to succeed in the most progressive workplaces today and the most common workplaces tomorrow, in which corporations open their companies and encourage digital collaboration across borders, primarily because they recognize that the human capital beyond an organization will always be greater than the human capital within." Without these skills, a person's chances of life success drop drastically.
Of course, there are some schools and teachers out there who do have the resources and ability to bring technology to life inside the classroom. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, most of these schools are those in high-income areas that can afford these technologies. The school that I work at is in a low-income area and we simply do not have the monitary resources to purchase the expensive equipment necessary. So I leave you all with this question: taking into account the growing disparities between the low and high-income school districts in regard to technology, in addition to Ferriter's quote about technological skills being necessary for success in today's progressive workplaces, do you think that technology can ultimately widen the gap in education?
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