Academia

I often wonder if what we are teaching in school is really going to help our students. I recently read some research that indicated that the only thing affecting a students future is the people that they are surrounded by. The education they received had little or no effect on their futures. Could this actually be true? I cannot imagine that the schooling system that has been around for hundreds of years can be deemed utterly ineffective, it just doesn't make sense.

While taking a grad curriculum course I am painfully aware of the curriculum, its development and philosophy. There is a large amount of time, money and people hours spent on developing a curriculum that is effective and provides students with what they need. How can the brightest of the bright be rendered useless? I try and teach in a manner that will give students some sort of tools that will help them in the rest of their academic careers and maybe, just maybe, in their lives outside of school. Web tools are my major focus this year and I am pushing it hard in all classes that I teach. My hope is that one student will use prezi,twitter or wallwisher for another assignment in the next couple of years. There has to be an end result that we are all working towards, an achievable goal.

School is supposed to be the equalizer in a world of bad breaks and missed opportunities. If this equalizer is taken away, how will kids ever get out of poverty, how will they raise self supporting children contributing to the economy? It worries me that people outside of the education world value school so little. Life experience will teach a student skills, but what if those life experiences are horrible or frightening? In my mind, education is the basis for everything. How can it be any other way?

Once a geek...

Twitter

I can't say enough about twitter and how useful it is for teachers. I am still on the fence somewhat about using it in the class. I introduced it to a group of grade 9's who then went somewhat crazy with it. Twitter is considered a social networking web 2.0 tool however, when used for professional or learning opportunities it is quite powerful.

I introduced twitter to a group of teachers and administrators within my division. I'm not sure how well it was received. They asked a lot of good questions and everybody signed up for an account. You need time to sit and look around in twitter to really understand what a great means of sharing and gathering information it is. Twitter and google reader go hand in hand for me. Any kind of website or blog that I find useful from twitter, I subscribe to in my reader using the rss feed. I also bookmark items using Diigo. It sounds all teched out, but once you use it, it makes all the sense in the world, to me anyways.

The fact that there was a classroom of teachers eager to learn something new was a pretty awesome site. It tells me that my colleagues at school love their jobs and are good at them and open to new ways of teaching and finding information. Anything that I have read over the last 2 years regarding integration of technology says that a teacher has to be comfortable and accepting of the tech. My colleagues proved that this week.

Once a geek...

Finally floating

Well I finally feel caught up. Most of my marking is fairly current and my coaching responsibilities are out of the way, at least until spring. Tech, Tech, Tech. What can I say about that. It is interesting that the more tech you use, the more you want to incorporate. It is extremely difficult to choose what fits best. The options are limitless when it comes to Web 2.0. Now that we are close to half way through the semester, students are starting to figure out the difference between a wiki and a google doc. When given the choice, they are choosing to share via google doc rather than a piece of paper. I just hope that they take this tool and use it in other courses throughout their academic careers. It doesn't even have to be a google product, but something of that nature.

Interesting thing occurred last week here in my school. The math department started their own wiki. When I say started, I mean jumped in feet first! The class wiki is working out really well for them as they have assignments and units posted along with video demonstrations. A sick student was able to keep up with help from the wiki. Once you start to look, there are so many things to use that are helpful. As far as I know, two tech teachers have wikis, a science and math teacher and one or two English teachers. That is awesome, as just a few short months ago, I was the only one that I know of. Tech is infectious that is for sure. It only takes one really good tool to get you started.

Once a geek...