My reflections after the first week...
How do my students learn? They learn by doing... by interacting, by communicating, by sharing... By the way, this is the buzz word, isn't it? "Sharing"... At first I was reluctant to accept what Carla and Gabriela were saying about Web2.0... But then, reflecting upon it, I could find a middle ground between my humanistic view and theirs (yours)... Yes, WEB2.0 is the 2nd phase of architecture of the World Wide Web; its improved form. At the same time, it is our innate drive to learn and develop that allowed us to take the stage... "The audience is taking the stage"... as the video said. We yearn to connect, to touch people's lives. That's how we teach and that's how our students learn: they connect! My life–time guru, Adrian Underhill, once told me that the more I gave my students, the less they would get it themselves. That's exactly what WEB2.0 has allowed: information is accessible and we have declared its ownership... as we all own it, we can get it; and so we shall! That's how people learn! They go after the things they need, they share their dreams and (once again quoting one of the videos) once you share dreams and ideas, they begin their road to reality! It's a crazy wonderful world of knowledge; democratic knowledge!
As for the second and third questions, you should have asked "How much tech-richness did your curriculum provide?" and How were you using the WWW to teach your students?" Einstein had his "Annus Mirabilis"... I've just had my "Week Mirabilis"! So many discoveries! I thought I knew about the internet and about computers... there's so much more that what I'd been doing!!!! The simplicity of a blog absolutely astonishes me! So many ways to use it with my students! Still I'm just beginning. I had already used our Flex blogs at CTJ, but I was just scratching the surface. This week I've already started building a second blog for my intermediate groups to interact and to share their compositions, their ideas, the songs we sometimes don't have time to do in class, the films we talk about... The so called "contact hours" can now be extended infinitely. My students won't have only those four fifty-minute weekly sessions in class. We can have much more! And that's how I think we can transform our 21st century classrooms into learning engines. By engaging our students in the world they visit every day... how many hours a day did that video say they spend on-line? We cannot underestimate the power of social networking, the appeal of collaboration at a personal level.
What are my main barriers to incorporating technology into my classroom? My own skills... I must feel more secure, less intimidated by the sheer power of this tool. Of course there is the financial side of it. Although the video mentions a democratic personal do-it-yourself media, and knowledge that is available at a low price, we need the hardware and the software... Just this week I had problems because could only access Edmondo using Internet Explorer 7 – which I didn't have. A few hundred dollars later, here I am! Ready! But this is workable… The fear is a lot more difficult to overcome, humans embrace development but we are resistant to change!
Anyway, I read two sentences that made me think a lot about what we've been doing. They were:
"Ideas are being put together – we are building a bird's nest"
and
"We think, therefore we are"
I'll close this week with those... Let the next week come!
