Thing 23

All of the different material that was presented to me over the course of this class, shows me that in the world of education things are constantly changing and will always be changing as something new becomes available. It wouldn't suprise me if some of the stuff we learned here will be obsolete in a couple to five years, having been replaced by something even better. I think that my thinking from Thing 1 to Thing 23 has not changed very much, except that I now know which of the 23 things I will be sure to use in my classroom and which of the "things" I will use from time to time. I also still think that technology is very important to use in the classroom. I think the one trend that Hargadon mentions in his blog post, which sticks out to me that most is from expert to facilitator. I feel that as technology becomes more readily available and easy to use for students, it is vitally important that educators understand all of the technology too. It will become my job to show students how to find the appropriate information and what to do with the information once they found it. Whether they are to create a blog or a wiki, I need to be able to answer their questions and assist them in their endevours. I also feel that the trend from passive to passionate learning could take place through the use of blogs and wikis. By allowing every student to have an opportunity to contribute to a discussion through using a blog or wiki it allows the students to learn from each other as well as myself. I feel that I will need to make sure to keep myself up-to-date on the latest and greatest technological breakthroughs, so I can stay ahead of or on pace with the ever changing Internet and the digital world. I know realize what a great tool the Internet can be for learning, when students are properly guided on their path to knowledge. I think the first way that I will use these new tools in and out of the classroom, will be to set up a class wiki. Next, I will use a daily blog to update my students and parents as to what is happening in the classroom and what is for homework. I will also check Slideshare for more interesting projects to use in my lessons. I like how delicious allows me to save multiple websites on one single website. I will continue to learn about Web 2.0 tools by reading blogs, listening to podcasts, and talking with my more tech-savvy colleagues. Overall my big takeaways from this experience are Wikis, blogs, Google Docs, and embedding videos. Finally crossed the finish line and it feels great!