Thing 1B

After watching the videos (the one linked here in particular) I have come to the conclusion that Web 2.0 is all about interacting and creating and not just observing. Okay, so here's the rub--what is the reality of our situation? Are we asking our students to create and interact on a daily basis? "To solve problems that they didn't start"? Maybe, depending on how you teach, but in the end, they are really asked to just observe, aren't they? To fill in the scantron at the end of the year and let what they have "observed" determine their worth as students and ours as teachers. This is the frustration that I spoke of in my previous post.

Now that I've stated what may have gone through the minds of many of you (or maybe not, maybe I was just being negative), I will move on. I think that's why I am taking this course. To find the satisfaction. To prove that yes, I can teach to a standardized test (there! I said it!), but do so in a way that encourages true participation and interaction. It just takes work and revisioning.

For example, as a reading teacher I know that one of the challenges is helping to make the reading relevant to the student. Well, now the challenge is extended to how do I not only make the material relevant, but how do I make their method of response and interactions with the material relevant? I love the idea of the students using wikispaces to create their own study guide. It's so much more relevant, obviously, but also so much more like a real world situation! Plus, this kind of learning allows the students to create and build something together rather than simply "observing" from the teacher.

I'm super excited about the possibilities and I don't feel like it's a "cop-out" to use the technologies that our students are well-versed in and would enjoy in order to teach our curriculum. Of course, as mentioned in one of the videos, with the new technology comes new responsiblities: privacy, authorship, ethics, copyright, I think were a few. For example, I know very well the negative affect that texts and emails have had on spelling and capitalization everywhere. We must not only teach our curriculum, but also the correct usage of these technologies. It is at once exhilerating and daunting...did anyone else feel a bit unsettled when the video said ,"We are the machine?" or that the machine would be smarter than us one day? Whoa! Hopefully that will be one of the problems that a brilliant student of mine can solve. : )

Thing 1A

Greetings fellow educators!
Ah! Education-one of the few things that can be so entirely frustrating and satisfying at the same time! And both the frustration and the satisfaction are reasons why I am taking this course.
So a little about me:
Name: Sherelle
School: WMS
Position: 8th grade Language Arts and Reading

Classroom/career interests: research and presentations, technology integration, hands-on activities, professional communities of teachers, reading strategies, mastering my new Promethean Board, learning new things through Professional Development

Personal interests: obsessed with fashion, counting down the days til the Blackberry takes over my life, enjoy cooking as a release and way to clear out the junk from the day, enjoy fitness, and adore theatre and acting so much I do not even know how to describe it

I look forward to learning along with everyone else in this course!
Peace out,
~your resident idiot