Doing a bit of blog surfing today…
First stop: Will Richardson’s Blog and all I can say is…WOW! Not only has he been consistency blogging since 2002 which is an inspirational feet for a new blogger like me to see, but the links and information that he provides his readers is as vast as it is useful. One site that Richardson linked to was SupportBlogging.com . The best way to describe this site is an educator’s dream in blog format…and it’s even alphabetized! There is everything from educational blogs to classroom blogs and podcasts to a list of blogs by students as well as blogs written by parents, professors, principals, administrators, library/librarians and psychologists.
One aspect of this site that was not included in the list above is the vast list of Teacher’s blogs which, when I have a spare moment or two, I will be revisiting. Even with a quick glance, I am amazed at the variety in terms of what a global list this is and how valuable it will be in broadening my teaching perspective.
Out Richardson’s vast collection of blog posts, one in particular catch my attention, it is titled Reality Check for good reason. The post recalls a story that Richardson recently heard from a school administrator describing how a group of parents requested a meeting to discuss the methods of a teacher and his use of technology in the classroom. This teacher had students write on their own wikispace’s , use Skype to interview people who they had researched and identified as valuable voices in their learning. He also shared all of this lectures and class work online so anyone (his class included) could access them under the Creative Commons license.
Once I got to this part of the post, I have to admit that I couldn’t see why the parents felt the need to discuss this particular teacher practices except maybe for privacy concerns regarding their child’s online presence. My guess was way off…
When the administrator took a phone call from the parent who wanted to set up the meeting and asked for some sense of what the problem was. The reply was, “Our students don’t need to be a part of a classroom experiment with all this technology stuff. They need to have a real teacher with real textbooks and real tests.”
Richardson ended his post with one word. Sigh. I agree with him 100%. Before this class, I dabbled using technology in the classroom with the students however, I was too scared that it would fail or I would run into technical difficulties to try anything outside of my comfort zone. Now, I am glad to say that I am ready to jump in however; this story about parents not being receptive to technology being used to enhance their students learning was not on my mind in terms of potential opposition that I will face. I figured that my main battle (so to speak) would be with administration (if they were not accepting of it) not parents however, now I realize that I need to be prepared to defend my point of view on using technology in the classroom to any critic out there.
Just a quick note…some of the other blogs (plus one ning) that I stopped at today and am now following are:
Liz B Davis
Drew McAllister
Educations PLN
In my next couple of posts, I plan on finishing up my Digital Nation “series” with Part III plus write about the above mentioned blogs and ning.
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