There is clearly a whole new world out there for us to explore. Much larger than it was for me when I was growing up, how did it get so large in such a short period of time? It is amazing to me how much is available to our students, but then the question arises, are we teaching our children to use these resources or are we teaching them to be successful in the world we grew up in?
There is the traditional classrom where students' work is done in isolation, how many classrooms can we walk into now that are still run in this traditional fashion, for at least part of the time?
A question from Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, "Is it starting to feel like you need your own army to help you keep track of all the information you might need or want?" leads me to realize that I am not the only one who may be overwhelmed by all the information available. The amount of information available has grown, while the world of access has become smaller.
What has struck me most about social bookmarking, and blogs and wikis too, for that matter is the fact that they are continuous conversations among many participants. People are more than willing to share their ideas and resources with others, in order to improve their cause. They understand by doing this they will get something great in return and they are!
How amazing to a person who grew up thrilled when I had a project to research and I actually found one paragraph in the encylopedia that pertained to the subject. Do our children even realize how close they are to a wealth of knowledge from not only experts, but everyday people who have a lot to offer.
I love the ideas presented by Will Richardson in his book mentioned above, I feel like I can start tomorrow!
1 comment:
Glad to see you are starting to look at how information and knowledge are formed in today's world. I like these two books. Richardson is the practical, "Here is how you do it." and Siemens is the theory behind why we need to do it.
There is a great wealth of knowledge out there and students are exposed to it every time they go online. But they do not know how to manage it, how to search for it, and how to make sense from the chaos that is this information highway. We would not put a student in the library for the very first time, with no training and say "Now go research Native Americans." Yet time and time again I watch teachers take students to a computer lab,have them go to google and say those exact words.
We need to teach a new set of skills, a set of skills that unfortunately most teachers themselves do not possess...or if they do possess do not know how to teach to others. These are the new research and literacy skills of the 21st century and we need to be teaching them starting in Kindergarten...because in Kindergarten students are already on the Internet!
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