Reflection on Chapters 1 & 2

Will Richardson in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms asks an important question about technology:
"What needs to change about our curriculum when our students have the ability to reach audiences far beyond our classroom walls? (Richardson, 2006, pg. 5)

Simply, EVERYTHING!

Student learning is absolutely impacted by the Internet and all the tools and technology that comes with the package. Why wouldn't you move to an online collaborative community? Shift your classroom to a paperless environment where information is cataloged and stored and easily retrieved.

I agree that there are perils that goes with the territory. Richardson says the key is teaching responsibility, appropriateness, and common sense. These ideas are important to the curriculum already, it is just new context. Absolutely good teaching dictates thorough planning and testing of our pursuits beforehand.

Chapter 2 Weblogs

Richardson calls blogs a "constructivist tool" that encourages ideas such as critical thinking, critical reading, and collaboration beyond the confines of the classroom. It is an exciting prospect for this English teacher that the process of learning and discovering content, as well as writing and reflecting on the content, becomes more of a continuous process instead of a linear process.

It is also exciting to keep key audiences involved in student works and ideas. It would have been so exciting for me as a student to read on a book and have a discussion with the author, a politician, or even other people as interested in the topic as me. My sophomore year of high school I was into transcendentalism. It would have put me over the moon to connect with a college professor familiar with this area of literature to stimulate my ideas. Or even some other person in the world who was as excited about this literature genre as me. But, it lived in a vaccum. Now, it doesn't have to with blogging.