Coming into school on the first day, I was immediately overwhelmed by the technology terms Rick Biche (my team leader) was throwing at me. I use to think my computer skills were up to par with the rest of the world but lately I feel I am constantly retraining myself and yet still trying to grasp the realm of the unknown. Although I have a class blog, Twitter, google reader and technorati account, I feel that I am far from giving my students the education they deserve to succeed in our ever changing society. For the past three weeks I have been involved in a Learning Through Teaching course at our school. Among many other conversations, the one that keeps returning is the struggle to stay on top of Literacy in the 21st Century. I feel that Konrad Glogowski says it best:
“In my classroom – a predominantly blogging classroom – things have to be different. I believe that it is my role as an educator to ensure that my students are given opportunities to grow as individuals, and are not treated as mere pupils who passively receive information.”
In this day in age in teaching, we as teachers, have to realize that our world is changing and with that our teaching needs to change. A colleague of mine, Sean Littlefield, stated:
“We as teachers have spent so much of our time debating what our students should learn that we have constantly overlooked how they learn it. With information so readily available at the click of a mouse we need to shift our paradigm. I feel almost blasphemous saying, but I am starting to care less and less about what content knowledge my students have. Five years ago I probably would have told you that it was important to me that my students be able to accurately describe the parts of a cell. Today I am less concerned about that and more concerned about their ability to successfully find that information when they need it.”
I believe it is true that teaching today is teaching the students how to find the information they need and how to build the knowledge they need in order to access that information. Simply going onto the internet and searching is not enough anymore, students need to know how to build a network, blog, comment, and communicate with people outside of their city, state, and even country. So, as I ponder this I think about my curriculum and the sources I am teaching to my students. Is it enough to have them commenting on my blog about topics I give them? Should I be spending endless hours searching for other Language Arts Classrooms to have discussions with and carry on conversations with my students? What other tools and resources should I be teaching them? When is too much, too much?
