This is an exciting time to be an educator. Knowledge is becoming accessible to more and more people. This includes students in the classroom. With the use of technology, students are no longer limited to a text book or video to learn. A culmination of world knowledge is literally at their fingertips.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is not a better hour spent than in a book store or public library looking through books. I love the smell of the pages and can spend hours just flipping through pages. Sadly, this same enthusiasm is not felt by most of the students that sit in my classroom everyday. They don’t seem to be happy unless they have something with buttons to push. For many of them, pages area a waste of time unless they can be turned with a “click.”
It is tempting to fight this and force students to read text-books, but believe me. I have tried. It doesn’t work. I have spent hours thinking about how I can reach students and teach them what they are going to need in the working world they are about to enter. The more I work with technology in the classroom, the more that I see that this is the answer.
Students have grown up in a digital world much different than most who are presently teaching. Instead of a computer being a machine that is going to make life more complicated ( a sentiment of many teachers), students see the computer as a way to communicate, recreate and relax. Few of them have learned of its potential for sharing knowledge.
We are on the cusp of a great transformation in the way people learn. No longer does a person have to spend hours thumbing through books to find the answer to a question. No longer does a person have to wait days for a letter to be returned (maybe even weeks depending on the destination). These things happen instantly with a few commands from a keyboard. Because of this, knowledge is becoming more and more accessible. Those who know how to use technology to learn and communicate are going to be the leaders of the future. Because of this, it is imperative that teachers integrate technology in the classroom.
One of the challenges in doing this is figuring out what to use and how to use it. With the internet, there seems to be an information overload at times that leaves a teacher tired and confused. This is the purpose of this blog.
I am not an expert on Web 2.0 in the classroom, but I get a kick out of surfing for new technology to use in my classroom. I plan to post ideas as I come across them and hope for feedback on how others might be using the same technology. If you have a great idea or website that you would like posted on this blog, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, or email me at mrkaiser208@gmail.com.
Hey Mr Kaiser.
It’s great to read about all the cool things you do in your class. The kids are very lucky.
You may like to check out the current blog post of this High School teacher I know where I live.
http://andrewdouch.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/%E2%99%AB-thank-you-for-the-music-for-giving-it-to-me-%E2%99%AB/
He writes about a great web app he found called uJam. Which allows people to record a song/ditty (which does not have music) and use uJam to add all the backing music. It looks easy enough and the end result is pretty impressive.
Thought you may like to add it to your bag of tricks.
Thanks for the tip on UJam. I actually ran across it a few weeks ago. We used it to auto-tune a song that students sang for a video they made. It is a cool app and works quite well.