World's Changing...Is Education?

When reading Richardson's text, titled "Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts", I found myself agreeing to many of his ideas. The overall theme seems to be that "The world is changing around us, yet as a system, we have been very, very slow to react." I completely agree with this point. As an educational system, we are hesitant on focusing on technology and instead, continuing to focus on aspects of learning that are less effective, especially when it comes to standardized testing.


With today's search engines and social media sites, students are being exposed to an extensive amount of knowledge and information that was not as readily available within our own childhoods. Because of this, I feel as though we need to put a great deal of focus into modifying our pedagogy and CURRICULUM to assure that our students are prepared for the world around us. As we have heard and seen, careers are being created around technology. The business world now relies heavily on technological programs in order to run successfully. If we want our students to become successful and efficient adults, we need to start incorporating technology into the classroom.

Another point I strongly agree with is that, "today's students, of almost any age, are far ahead of their teachers in computer literacy." I feel as though many teachers are set in their ways and are not comfortable learning a new skill, such as managing a social networking account or creating a classroom blog. With such accounts and blogs in place, not only will students further their learning (especially at home), but they will also be exposed to creating, managing, and contributing to a technological measure.

When I related chapter 2 to my own school, I felt as though we are on the right track; however, not yet there. Breakthrough Magnet School (breakthroughmagnetschool.org) has a very parent and student friendly website. They even have a website full of student resources that help further student learning at home! Additionally, they have grade level "Peek of the Weeks" that give parents a summary of what is going on within the classroom. Other school-wide announcements can be found here as well. When exploring further, I found that many of the teacher pages/peek of the weeks were outdated, some even from the last school year! I think this is another problem when incorporating technology into the classroom; staying up-to-date on postings!

I compared my school's website to lewiselementary.org. What I found was amazing! Not only was the main page updated almost daily with current news and events, but the teacher notes were extremely detailed and informative as well! This is what all schools need!

Finally, when looking for wikis and blogs, I found that there were none where students and parents could contribute to the information/posts. As Richardson states, critical reading and writing skills, management skills, and collaboration skills can all be refined through blogging activities. Personally, my one concern is how can I incorporate a successful blog into my classroom due to the fact that I work with special education students. I do not have these students daily, or for a specific subject or task. 

How can I create a blog that not only is informative for students and parents, but also helps to work on specific student strengths and deficits for special education students?