hillary.seeland@gmail.com
16 October 2007
"Read/Write Web"
Will Richardson
The landscape of education is shifting. This is the warning Will Richardson sends to current educators. No longer is the concept of literacy defined as simply reading and writing, but it now includes editing and collaborating. The addition of the latter two skills requires that students expand their learning beyond the classroom. To improve understandings and connections with their learning, students must feel that their work is "meaningful" and "purposeful". The web can help achieve these goals by allowing students to access connections with experts in their learning fields and with other students around the globe. In this model, the classroom teacher shifts from a role as educator and becomes more of a facilitator; s/he is a guide, ever present to help students make the aforementioned connections.
- The Internet is a forum for publishing student work, collaborating on projects, and engaging in online conversations.
- Blogs, which anyone with an Internet connection can access, are a useful tool to teach critical thinking and communications skills.
- Wikis are like data Lego sets; they can be built, demolished, and reconstructed by anyone, anywhere, and at anytime. Great for class collaboration projects.
- RSS, Social Bookmarking, and Podcasts allow students and teachers access to constant, up-to-the-minute information.
- Teachers must not ostrichize themselves from this technological phenomenon.
- Teacher might want to rethink their role in the classroom.
- There are risk factors involved with Web publishing: namely privacy and safety implications.
- How much information students divulge is dependant on adult comfort levels, the capabilities of the software being used, federal and state laws.
I agree that teachers should be aware of the technological shifts taking place in society, but I am also ardently against a vision of the future in which students are glassy-eyed and monitor-glazed. Richardson piles a load of importance on Web usage, but his voice is arrogant and unrealistic in most of its points. He assumes that most schools and families have the funding for this technology, when in fact, they don't. The districts and families that do have the funding would gain much from tech use in school, but I would venture to ask whether or not they would be accessing an accurate portrait of the world at large.
Yes, I will use technology in my classroom, and yes, I will guide my students to critically analyze the information they have spat at them every nanosecond, but I will also treasure the moments when they extract a piece of post-consumer recycled paper from their backpacks, load a fountain pen with non-toxic ink, and scratch out a personal essay: just for me.
