Chapter 5: Building Knowledge Without Boundaries: Online Learning

Online learning is becoming the way to learn. Not only can students do projects, research, etc..., but now colleges are offering degrees on them. I think this is awesome for adults who are trying to further their educations, but still have to work. I think it has a different meaning for students still in their early part of education. Students still need interaction with their peers, but as we have become TRC schools I notice a lot of none involved students have become much more willing to be involved in the classroom.

Chapter 4: Accessing Primary Sources to Enhance Critical Thinking

This chapter was an excellent source of how to make things alive in your room. All of these sources are ones that can be used by media specialists/other teachers in buildings. I think it is up to teachers to make sure that students understand the true meaning of "primary sources", but then it is up to students to do the researching/teaching. The chapter is an example of his/her classroom becoming a teacher lead & guide room.

Chapter 3: Emerging Roles Within the Knowledge Community

The part that stood out to me in this chapter was the section on reverse mentoring. I loved the first sentence, "teachers do not need a lot of technical skills." With the way that technology is changed, almost on a daily basis it seems, there is just way too much to keep up with. Teachers need to be able to manage our classroom while students are using many technologies at one time. It is more important for us to to learn what the students are able to do with their skills. Example was designing a website. The teacher doesn't have to design the website, but have the students do it with the teacher acting as one of the publisher/editor.

One thing that I know that I need to really work on was listed on page 39, The essential skill is to know: what to publish, when to publish, & hot to help students make a meaning of feedback.

Chapter 6: Web Literacy for Educators

Expanding the Boundaries:

This chapter was very good & interesting. With education starting to go more & more to technology, there also comes a lot of negatives and "fire walls". Alan November does a great job of giving examples & sites to help teachers be able to use blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis. The best part is the examples from real teachers and how they use them.

The biggest thing to take away from this chapter is that blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis can be dangerous, but we teachers should provide excellent role models & thoughtful ethics for students to be able to use them in the classroom. We don't have control of what they do out of school, but need to set the examples for them to use and carry over.

Blogs: There was a teacher who was having his class blog about the book they were reading, Mississippi Trail, and the actual author got involved on the blog and ended up coming to their school. Several examples talk about the possibilities of global connections on assignments that students across the world could connect on. More students are excited about writing. They enjoy doing it, look forward to doing it, & continue with this on their own.

RSS: is the new way of "bookmarking" websites, but much better. Teacher's can subscribe to receive feeds from their favorite sources and they receive information the minute it hits the web. This in not very popular, but is gaining.

Podcasts: is audio or video. Lets students experience knowledge of lifelong leraners. There are lots of podcasts you can download through iTunes. The students become the leaders & learners.

Wikis: is a web based tool that allows groups to work on a piece at one time & add to it. Wikipedia has had bad press because anyone & everyone can add to it. There are community members who do monitor to check how valid every entry that is made. The example for this is a project that students all over the world can come together & tell stories of where they live.

Alan November says that these are some of the technologies that students are using & will be asked or required to use in the future. That teacher's need to step up and be the "positive" role models for our students.

Chapter 2: Empowering Learning by Expanding Relationships

This chapter was about moving past software and everything is turning to web 2.0 tools. Alan November also talks about making our kids information & communication literate. Making sure what we teach & do with technology is meaningful & purposeful. A big piece of technology that is underused is the fax machine. To develop "fax buddies" whether it be local or global. Video conferencing is a very powerful tool to use. It is amazing to see how kids as young as preschool/kindergarten learners using this. This technology can be used with student/family & student/student local or global. E-mail is another communicative technology that needs to be utilized with students more. Again, it is something that can easily be done local & global. Many students have a hard time knowing what other students in their own country is like, let alone what different countries students are like/do.