Change in Thinking About the Blog
O.K. so in my first post on this blog I said that I didn’t intend on this being shared publicly. I have changed my thought on that. I have been reading Jeff Utecht’s blog The Thinking Stick and he recently had a post about rethinking the purpose of blogs. He discusses how blogs intentions are not strictly intended to be virtual diaries, but rather as an opportunity to have conversations and to invite people’s thoughts and stimulate thinking. I really love this idea because as a teacher I really want my students to become thinkers. While the state requires that my students have knowledge about certain standards of content I think it is just as important that my students learn how to think and acquire the necessary skills to be successful in an ever-changing world.
I think this also goes along with an idea that I saw on Justin Medved’s blog Medagogy in which he talks about losing the use of buzz words like blog, wiki, and Web 2.0 and instead he refers to what they really are like “collaboration and sharing” and his description of Web 2.0 as “the here and now”. This is so true yet I talk with educators that feel like they don’t have time to start using “that stuff”, but I don’t think they realize or understand that it is not really that much different than applications they are already using, it is just a way to globalize ideas and information. For me and my students this year we have been doing class and student blogs and had a great experience when 5th graders at the Shanghai American School in China commented on one of our blog entries. This exposed myself and my students to the power of “the here and now” by seeing first hand that students all the way in China are sharing information and collaborating with students in Lexington, South Carolina. HOW COOL IS THAT!
R.B.
