Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: Chapter 10 & Epilogue

     I think that a major theme of chapter 10 was that there are many shifts that must occur and are occurring in both society and technology. To better reach our students we must be willing to adapt, modify, and change the way that we go about instructing; we must teach for the youth of today, not the youth of our past. The biggest point that stuck out to me while reading this chapter, was the idea of educators taking on more of a coaching role. As I have been learning in my mathematics education classes, teachers must step back and turn their classrooms into student-centered environments rather than teacher-centered environments. Teachers cannot simply show and tell everything in the classroom, rather teachers must help students become independent thinkers, learners, and do-ers. Students typically remember information better when they have made their own connections and have come to understand the topics on their own (with, of course, teacher facilitation). It is sometimes hard to think about the role of a teacher as being a coach, because growing up, that was not the case; what it really must come down to though is that education must meet the needs of its current students. What worked in the past is not what will work in the future, in terms of education. Teachers must help students become functional, outside of the classroom, in the real-world. With so much information available for our students on the web, teachers must instruct students on proper digital citizenship. Students are going to be using technology, the question remains whether they will use it appropriately or not; it is up to educators and parents to teach children how to get the most out of the web, while avoiding inappropriate use. Teachers must also encourage students to be readers, writers, and reviewers of information of the web; teachers can do this by making assignments (in the upper grades) that require posting their answers (which may be words, pictures, movies, etc...) to the blog or web.

     Change can be scary, but things get better with time!

     As a future educator, I want to encourage my students to be independent learners (not learners who do not communicate, but learners who do not rely heavily on the teacher). I want my students to be prepared for the real-world, and I want my students to be successful. To help my students be successful, I must be willing to utilize the current technology to foster thinking and growth in learning. One thing that worries me, is how I will incorporate the read/write web into a first or second grade classroom; I think that it would be difficult to do all that much with first/second graders, but I think that I could have a blog where I post some of their assignments and crafts so that the parents could be more intouch with what is happening in the classroom. I do not know how much a first grader could be expected to do on the web, but I think that education in the upper elementary and middle school could definitely benefit from the use of the read/write web in the classroom.