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.