Thing #2--Thoughts About Web 2.0

My name is The Weak Geek and I no habla Geekese! I just read the first paragraph of “a day in the life of web 2.0,” and I’m working on accepting this new language as a challenge and not giving up or giving in to frustration. I was excited to read about the teacher, Ms. S, because what she is doing for her students is what I dream of doing with my 3-6 grade literacy class for MISD teachers; she’s created a blog with all the pertinent course information that also serves as a forum for discussion.

For the last few years I have been using the old school method of having teachers journal, turn them in to me (or really high tech, they could email them to me), and I responded to each individual teacher. That way we had just a two-person conversation. With the blog, everyone can read the thoughts and questions of the rest of the class and increase the learning by working as a community to process the information.

Other aspects I love about Ms. S’s blog is that students have an authentic purpose for writing and know that others besides a teacher will be reading what they have to say. That creates tremendous buy-in for the activity. It is such a natural way to stimulate higher order and critical thinking.

Back to that language problem! I'm not sure I'm dreaming of creating a blog or a wiki? I’ve had minor introductions to wikis, RSS, Twitter, etc. Just enough to say I have heard the terms. We always talk to kids about the various ways you can know a word. I’m at that bottom rung. I can pronounce them and have heard them. Some I know a little about, but I certainly hesitate to use them in conversation at this point because my understanding of them is minuscule. I think that will be changing rapidly!

As I continued to read this article, I had a sensation of reading the science fiction genre. But I know it’s real (somewhere)! I want to make it part of MISD! So come on! Teach this old dog some new tricks. Can you imagine opening up what we do in our classrooms to parents and other teachers the way that was revealed in the article. How fabulous!

Thing #1 Reflections on Lifelong Learning

I'm quite perplexed because things are going pretty well at this point! (I know, I know...there are 20 more tasks ahead of me! Plenty of time to bog down during this quest.) Already you should find it evident that the 4th Habit, "Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner (don't say it or think it unless you want it to be true)," will be my biggest hurdle. Is it fair to say that it's in direct correlation to Habit 3 which says you must view problems as challenges to learn from rather than crises? Problems eat time and time is of the essence this summer. Lots of projects in the works. But you all can help me if I call, right? The easiest habit may be to "play" with what we are learning. (Another time eater!) I've already watched some updated videos that showed up as a link to the ones we were assigned to watch. I've used the whiteboard, too. Without a doubt, keeping up with the goals I've set will be most important for me. I'm really going to have to manage my time well to get everything done, but I'm looking forward to more successes on the "things" to come!