Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society: A Reflection

As a younger teacher in my school, I have always taken a bit of pride in being one of the more technologically advanced teachers. I thought that my PowerPoint presentations, streaming videos, and instructional websites were so cutting edge and cool. Over the past four years, I have heard of "blogging" and used "wikis" to do research, but I felt that Wikipedia was simply just a great research engine and that blogging was for MySpace fanatics and people who just wanted the world to know what they are going at the current moment. And forget about trying to make a podcast. I thought that was something only ESPN did to hear about sports on the go. Boy was I wrong. As a digital native, I should have much more accepting of these powerful Web 2.0 tools and should have investigated and became more familiar with them much sooner than I did.

This class has shone a light on these amazing tools and has shown me how easy these tools are to manipulate and help educate the workforce of tomorrow. I created my own Podcast, worked collaboratively to create a wiki, and am currently blogging with ease! All of these skills I can now infuse into my classroom instruction to finally "do something different", instead of "doing things differently". (Thornburg, 2009)

The resources my profession has chosen to present to us also has opened my eyes to the 21st century skills necessary for my students' future success in the workforce. Many of these skills were already a staple of my instruction, but now I recognize their importance and will continue to promote skills such as critical thinking, working collaboratively, being technologically sound, and communicating globally. My students and my teachings will be able to reach a more global audience. My online lessons will no longer be a step by step instruction lesson dictated by me, they will be lessons of self exploration and cooperative learning. I will now be the facilitator I should be instead of the director that I used to be.

All these discoveries can prove to be absolutely worthless unless I apply them in my current teaching situation. All this work will be in vain if it doesn't benefit my students in some way. My students need to be exposed to the same powerful Web 2.0 tools and 21st century skills that I have been exposed to in this class. In order to ensure this, I have to set some goals for myself. Goal number one: I will have my students become familiar and comfortable with blogging by having them participate in online blogging literature circles. In order to do this, I first must ensure we have the appropriate resources (IE, enough computer time) and parental or digital immigrant support for this project. I need to convince the parents them importance and also assure the safety of communicating to a global audience. As our school has just recently earned "Green School" status, I feel that this idea will easily win over our administration and I plan on being very convincing towards the parents during Back-to-School-Night.

Another goal is to have my class participate in a collaborative wiki project with a very culturally diverse group of students from around the globe. I have a friend who teaches 11-year-old Taiwanese children English in Taiwan. I would like to start a project using a wiki in which my class has to create a wikispace with a groups of students from Taiwan. The topics of the wikispaces have yet to be determined so I fully encourage any ideas that my global audience may have. This is something I wish to develop over the course of this year and put into full practice by next year.

The only way both of these goals can be accomplished is by my continuing professional development and continuing practice with Web 2.0 tools. Teachers who can speak Web 2.0 can teach Web 2.0. I will continue to create podcasts, contribute to wikis and, I promise you, this will not be my last blog. These are my reflective thoughts.

Thought of the Day - My First Podcast

Here is the link to my first podcast. Warning, this is a very amateur attempt at podcasting!

http://www.podcastmachine.com/podcasts/1450/episodes/6852