Week 6 Ed Tech Questions

What is your reaction to the 10 Big Shifts in Education? Which shift(s) will be easier and harder for your to integrate in your future teaching/classroom? Please explain.

I am really excited about the 10 shifts in education, because many of them follow with my philosophy of education. The shifts include collaboration with other teachers around the globe, having students publish work to a worldwide audience that can be archived and referred to for years to come, rather than only accessed by a teacher as is done traditionally. Using the web as a platform to collaborate with others, access primary sources such as experts in a field, have students create a public portfolio for the world to see, comment on, learn from, and for students to access forever are all part of the big shifts in education. We as teachers will also take part in learning by learning beside our students, which is also an attribute of the big shift as well (November, 2010).

I think each of these shifts - collaboration with other students, teachers and experts, factchecking our web sources, having students upload assignments to the web for a public audience to access and learn from are all easy and manageable goals for me in education. I htink that as a teacher, I can do research and have my students research experts to contact and conference with. I think that through forums, I could team up with other teachers across the world, and hopefully form a collaborative community with their classrooms that allows my students and theirs to interact with each other, learn from each other, and be an audience to each other's work, providing feedback and constructive advice. I will have students upload assignments on their blogs or through a wiki site.

One thing that I do think will be difficult is to have a completely "online" classroom community. I think it will be difficult because while it is a goal of mine, the reality is that there isn't much access to computers for students during school hours. Therefore, much of the work done in class can only be done on paper and turned into the teacher at this time. However, while it would be ideal to have all assignments students complete uploaded online, it is also not completely necessary. Students could upload the important documents such as labs and homework assignments, while in-class work and worksheets could just be done by paper in the classroom. I guess this lends back to last week's questions - how our classrooms will be in the 21st century - and now I am realizing, it will be one where students and teachers have 24/7 access to the web and their blogs!!!