Blog #2-Research and the Reflective Practitioner

I have come pretty far in my journey through this world of Web 2.0 tools. I started as a novice grad student, who thought I was doing a great job of "integrating technology" by simply having my students surf the net and go to a website during reading group rotations. I still do these things on a daily basis. I love Spelling City, a great site where students can go to practice spelling words. I use this not only during the day, but also as a choice in their weekly spelling contract.

However, I have quickly learned that to truly use technology, I must expand my view of technology. Students are not using technology if they are simply sitting in front of a laptop or computer. They may be technically using it, but are they really using it effectively?

Now that I have been exposed to so many different tools, I am slowly trying to use these tools. One such tool is VoiceThread. I have taken small steps each year, reflectively thinking about ways I can use it more effectively. I am now eliciting the help of parents for my students to practice their fluency. This decision was made through much thinking about the lack of resources and time to fully use the website. I am excited to use this with my students on a regular basis, and really think it will have a great impact on their oral reading fluency.

Even though I am just starting this next step, I have already begun to look beyond and look for more ways to improve. I found this section of the VoiceThread 4 Education wiki, where teachers can post contact information so they can connect with different classrooms throughout the country. I think this would be a great start to safely open up my students VoiceThread projects to a larger audience.

I have continued to do more research, and found a great VoiceThread for Educators Ning, which I have joined. I have only started to explore the site, but I have already found some great discussions and posts.

Of all I have learned through my experiences with the Web 2.0 universe, my biggest lesson has to continually reflect upon my practice. Just as we have moved from a traditional paper and pencil classroom into the world of Web 2.0, this Web 2.0 world will continue to evolve. The only way I can keep up is to continue to educate myself, research these new tools, and figure out how to successfully use them in my own classroom.

Blog #1-Creating my own Social Network

Social networking has already become a part of my personal life in some respect. I went to school at the start of the Facebook phenomenon, and have to admit that I use it quite regularly to communicate with both friends and relatives. Since taking my last class, I have used my Google Reader to aggregate many of my personal sites-my guilty celebrity gossip sites, as well as the more reputable news sources.

For some reason, however, I have not made the complete leap to create a social network in my professional life. In previous courses I have aggregated wonderful bloggers and other sites that are quite applicable to my work. Despite the fact that I do not read them quite as often as I would like, I do find myself checking every so often to see what is new in the world of Web 2.0.

As you can probably see from the other posts on this blog, I have used this blog before for a course. I haven't just read other's social networks, but have made an attempt to participate in the conversation. As you can also probably tell, I didn't really use this blog outside of those courses. I do see and understand the wonderful reasons to blog in the classroom-both with students and as a tool for parent and community communication. I sat down and started thinking about why I haven't done more to extend my blog. After reading Vicki Davis's blog post on the 8 reasons why teachers don't blog, I saw a lot of myself.

I can see some of her 2nd reason, humility, in myself. I find myself asking "Who is actually going to read or care about my blog?"" Her third reason, paranoia, also hits home. If I were to use a blog, I would be very scared to post any honest opinions for fear of retribution. However, I think that the biggest reason that I don't blog is the same as #5-Feeling Overwhelmed. Just reading other blogs takes forever. How am I ever going keep up a blog? As I continue down the road of Web 2.0, I hope that I am able to overcome these misgivings and jump in!