Chapter 10: What it all Means

Summarization:

This chapter reiterated points from the previous 9 chapters and one of the main points with all the technology tools was the switch from a very independant education to cooperating and collaborating with others in your education.  Richardson listed the switches that would have to take place like not "owning" your curriculum, but sharing.  Learning at any time of the day, any time of the year rather than during school hours and knowing where to find information were two of the other shifts that really struck a chord with me.

Application:
Like anything in education, I think this could be a hard change for those that are used to "their stuff".  I'm excited to share more and not just with someone in my school or my district, but potentially worldwide.  Increasingly students have shown up in my room before school in the morning to inform me about an earthquake that happened or volcanic eruption or to tell me about a cool video of some scientific thing that we have learned about during the year.  The students are finding out on the Web on their own time about these different things.  However, I still think their is value in having face to face contact with students to learn how to work with each other and to get guidance about what is truthful/accurate and what is not.  One thing I've gone away from in my teaching is the memorization, especially of numbers (how many miles to the sun, exactly how much is an AU, etc) due to the ease of looking these up.  My philosophy is that it is way more important to understand how and why things work the way they do in science.  I also really liked switch #10 "Contribution, not Completion".  How many times have we caught or suspected kids of cheating as they just needed to complete the assignment.  Isn't our ultimate goal always to have kids contribute, but sometimes find it had for each kid to contribute in their own unique way?  Maybe using more of these tools would help cut down on cheating as the whole world (or at least your class) could see that they had the same thing as someone else in your class.

Chapter 9: Social Networks

Summarization:  This chapter dealt with Social Networks like Facebook and Ning.  Facebook is more a social community and I belong to this so didn't learn a ton of new stuff about it.  I did play around with the "create a group" feature a little to see if I'd want to use that in the classroom.  The book also suggested to look into "Courses" on Facebook.  From the posts I saw it looks like it didn't work very well and lots of people had issues, so I don't think I'd use it.

Ning is more a place for people for shared interests.  There is a charge for Ning, so I didn't sign up for an account as I'd never use this with middle schoolers.  The other thing I found interesting in this chapter was on page 145 when talking about kids misusing the computer.  I found the quote, "when kids cross behavioral lines at school, we don't shut them down, we address the issue and try to learn from the experience." very interesting.  This is so true with technology that teachers, administrators, and districts shut down or block something, yet we accept all kids.  We need to treat technology not as something to be feared, but something to be taught how to use repsonsibly and respectfully.  We owe it to students to teach them what they will need to deal with in their life and technology is a big part of this!

Application:  I might use Facebook as most students are familiar and have accounts.  When I tried creating a group I was only able to invite current friends, and really don't want to friend my students.  I guess I'm wondering if there is a way around this?  This would probably be the easiest place to post pictures of students in class so they would actually go and look at them.  I would be more likely to check this and read posts and comments.