#TheFuture

    As I was building my wiki I began thinking of different ways I could use this in my current role as a Quality Lead; I personally think that having a Team Wiki would be very useful since we are a satellite team and do not have the privilege of seeing each other daily.  The second part of our team is located in Knoxville, TN and we are only able to converse through phone or email/instant messenger.  If we were to use a wiki to collaborate and document our living charter it could help us keep things more organized and streamlined.
    I think the best feature of a wiki is the ability to have multiple editors on a single site, this way you do not have to wait for someone else to update your idea - you have the ability to do so immediately.  If there is an issue with the wording or information, another person is able to tweak it and make changes without having to wait for the person who initially posted it.  It’s a living site that is able to constantly change - I absolutely love this idea!
    This could work for multiple teams or classrooms, where students would be allowed to update a story in an English class.  A group story could be completed by multiple students on their wiki, providing links to images or video that helps describe their growing piece of literature.  Since they are able to access the wiki at home, they would be able to contribute if they were sick or if they were on vacation.
    A wiki could also be helpful for teachers who needed to collaborate on the upcoming school year; new updates or suggestions could be posted to the wiki while on summer break by various members of the staff.  They could provide multiple sources for their suggestions by simply posting or hyperlinking other sites or examples.
    Personally I have never updated or edited a wiki until this class, but I believe that it is an extremely useful tool that many people could use in their lives or work.  A family wiki could be created, chronicling the history and various ancestors by members of the same family across cities, states, and countries.  One person might find out more information about a particular ancestor and be able to make the necessary edits quickly and easily, which would alert the other members of the changes so they could continue to learn about their family.
    Wikis have a million different uses, you can easily find one for whichever topic you are interested in.  My husband and I like to browse the Muppet Wiki from time to time, just to find out more about our childhood favorites.  I’ve never made any edits or contribution, but who knows!  Maybe this assignment was just the boost I needed!

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

     I’ve had a Google Reader set up for a while, mainly because I was playing around with Gmail and Google when I first created our Gmail account.  I haven’t really paid much attention to it though, so it was nice to have a reason to reacquaint myself with it.  I could have been wrong in how I went about subscribing to everyone’s Blogger account, I just “followed” the blog and then had to copy and paste the link into my Google Reader subscription bar.  I found this to be kind of a pain, and I noticed that this was not the case on other blogs that were not provided by Blogger since they had the handy-dandy RSS feed button to click and subscribe to all in one.  Of that I was a fan!

     I do enjoy using my blog, though!  I’ve been addicted to cooking blogs ever since we bought our house a year ago.  I wish I were talented or interesting enough to be able to write about something a mass of people would enjoy reading about!  But I suppose that is every blogger’s wish and goal, isn’t it?         

     When thinking about Dale’s Cone and the blog and RSS feed, I personally feel that it would fall in the Verbal Symbol s portion of the Cone.  Both forms of technology depend on the written word or “word of concretion” (127) to get their point across; I also really enjoyed how the article expressed that this point on the Cone was not reserved for those with superior intellects, but for anyone who had the ability to read and write.  This stood out because that is really the case when it comes to blogs; they are used by anyone with access to the internet and feels they have something to share with the World Wide Web.  The RSS feed allows people easy access to the information that is being broadcasted by various individuals, professional or otherwise.

     After reading Siegel’s article about “computer imagination” I began thinking about the different ways blogs and RSS feeds could be used imaginatively.  I enjoy the idea of being about to share the classroom’s progress with parents and guardians who might not have a chance to be as involved in their child’s school life as they would want to be.  Posting pictures and examples of the students’ projects to demonstrate their progress and how they spend their time in class would be a great use for a blog; it would help families stay more connected to their student, especially if a parent is out of state or overseas. 

     RSS feeds would be useful for a teacher especially when they are looking to use various articles for a lesson and need to be in one location for easy access.  The reader is also useful for being able to explore different sites that the teacher may not know about; this could help provide new lesson plans or new ways to teach a certain topic.  Blog posts for fellow teachers could also be posted here and provide constant updates on the state of their classrooms as well. 

               

Technology isn’t intrinsically good or evil. It’s how it’s used. Like the Death Ray.

     I have always been a huge fan of technology and how it is so seamlessly integrated into our lives; whether it’s at home, work, or school.  I believe that it is a necessary function to continue to gain knowledge and build upon what we have already learned.  After reading both articles, I haven’t found myself more or less convinced of the necessity of technology in the classroom – but I did find both articles to be very interesting and they offered up arguments that I had not considered in the past for both sides.

     In the Reigeluth and Joseph article, I found their distaste for the standardization of classrooms to be a bit extreme.  The placement of students of the same age level in a classroom where the teacher is able to provide the same instruction to all her students is a practical device.  I currently do not have my teaching degree, but I can respect the reasoning behind this set-up for a classroom and grade level.  I do agree with the idea of the “advancement of all” in the classroom and making sure that the student masters the lesson before moving on.  The concept of customized learning is a nice one, and I believe that it can be accomplished in standardized classrooms as well.  The school I attended from K-8 was a very small school, where multiple grades were in one classroom and taught by the same teacher.  In this situation, the teacher was able to teach lessons across the grades, but also break into groups when it was necessary to provide an extra level of support to those who were not catching on as quickly and also giving other groups more advanced lessons to work on in the meantime.  I really enjoyed this style of learning, but I realize that most schools do not have the luxury of having so few students to teach in this way.  If it were possible to issue students an iPad with lessons built in, it would be a very similar set-up to my K-8 school where groups of children who are ready to move on could, and those who needed some extra attention would be able to receive it.

      When thinking about the Postman article where he is adamantly against the benefit of having updated technology in the classroom, I’m not sure if all his points are completely rational – mainly the one giving the examples of information overload in our country (“260,000 billboards, 17,000 newspaper … 400 million television sets” etc).  It’s obvious that these are not useful in the education of our children and I don’t believe it’s fair to group them all together as if there were no distinction.  Students using an iPad or laptop to assist with grasping an idea or concept, or being able to type out a paper that they researched with the use of textbooks and approved online resources is not the same as being exposed to mindless television shows or billboard advertisements on their way home from school.   But I do agree with his statement that a school or teacher could not be replaced by the addition of technology. I particularly liked his statement “[t]he role of the school is to help students learn how to ignore and discard information so that they can achieve a sense of coherence in their lives; to help students cultivate a sense of social responsibility; to help students think critically, historically, and humanely; to help students understand the ways in which technology shapes their consciousness; to help students learn that their own needs sometimes are subordinate to the needs of the group” (Joseph, 1993).   

     

     Being afraid or resistant to technology (which is sounds like Joseph is/was) is not the answer either.  A moderated inclusion of technology into a teacher’s lesson plan would be, in my opinion, the best way to achieve this goal.  Using technology for the sake of technology is not the answer and never will be – and I’d like to think that most educators realize this.  Technology in the classroom will just continue to grow throughout the years, so realizing how to integrate it successfully early on is our best bet in having teachers and students use it properly.

The Beginning

"If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious sh*t." - Doc Brown