students. In my opinion the best way to gain full understanding is to fully engage. Consider this, would you rather fly on a plane flown by a pilot who has done extensive research on flying planes, reads about flying and has been in an airplane many times as a passenger. Or, would you rather the pilot have many actual flying hours, real experience, and know what to do in many different circumstances, because he has been through many real-life scenarios before? I know my answer, it is the second pilot. Often times when things seem like they work on paper, but are not effective when put into action. A study on Authentic Learning by Marilyn M. Lombardi (2007) confirmed this thought, “Isolated facts and formulae do not take on meaning and relevance until learners discover what these tools can do for them.”. It is our duty as teachers to be able to work through all facets of an assignment with students and troubleshoot problems that may occur. If you have gone through some of the issues personally, your ability to help others with like issues increases.
With that being said, blogging is becoming quite prevalent with the teaching community, it is not a requirement to have a blog for student and parent access. Although I have a blog for school use, I am looking forward to enhancing my blogging skills. Specifically, I would like to maximize efficiency with the blog, because I know students, and parents for the matter tend to read less than half of what is assigned, (A Vision of Students Today by Michael Wesch, 2010). Another aspect of the blog I would like to improve upon is making it more interactive. In his book Richardson mentioned although the numbers for Web 2.0 use are increasing, they are still not large enough (Richardson, 2010, p.1). I would like my students to enjoy going to my blog, and engage in the learning content they work with on the blog page. In my experience students prefer to learn through engaging, and I think this would increase engagement and hopefully increase learning.
At Kell High School Web 2.0 is encouraged to be incorporated into each lesson. I think the most impactful change is the rate at which content is delivered to the students. In the past students received information in class or on a weekly automated phone call from the school. Good or bad, students now have the ability to get class information nearly 24 hours a day. I say good or bad, because it puts more responsibility on the students to stay up to date checking blogs, and teacher webpages, but it is good because the students can always be current with the most up to date class information. This is a positive trend, allowing us to constantly review our content, have discussions about it, and make changes. To me, it makes the subject more dynamic and relevant.
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oak, California: Corwin.
Lombardi, Marilyn M. (2007). Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview. Edited by Diana G. Oblinger