The mission…
Hey there everyone…or anyone, depending on how many people decide to drop by! I have to say, that upon entering this class, I had a few expectations of what Teaching Writing would be about–and this isn’t exactly it. Not that I’m not excited at the prospect of learning about blogging and bringing technology into the classroom; don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of getting students out onto the internet to showcase their work, read and comment on the work of others, and stay current with things happening in the world.
One of the only problems I face, however, is that I don’t really have the slightest idea on how to go about doing this in my own classroom. Sure, I took Computers in Education, and I could pull off doing my work in there, but how to set it up on my own and know how to monitor, critique and grade dozens of students on it is a totally different process.
I have not yet learned effective ways of intergrating technology into the curriculum while still adhering to the standards I must teach my students. Can it be done, and how effective is it? Does integrating technology enhance the learning, or does it keep students from learning the things they must in order to pass standardized tests?
These are some of my biggest worries about my future classroom, so I figure why not dedicate my blog to finding a more concrete answer for myself? I’ll be using articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Google News, and a blog I found not too long ago by a man named Tom McHale called “The Open Classroom: Using technology, transparency, and discussion to transform education.” I wanted to choose well-known newspapers that will hopefully give me a lot of different uses and implementations for technology in the classroom. I chose Tom McHale’s blog as I was going through educational.blogs.com because, from briefly looking over the blog, he seems to say a lot on the subject I am most curious about.
I hope that by creating this blog and reading up on the impact that technology has on education, I can sort out for myself how to effectively integrate technology so that my students will take a more active interest in the things I present to them. I want to have a better grasp on what ways technology aides in the learning process and development of students. By the end of this project, I want to be able to–with some confidence–know how to teach my students all the things they have to learn in ways that are interesting and make them want to learn. Here’s hoping…
