From our weekly assignment (T&L in the networked classroom) ... "As the half-life of knowledge continues to decrease and the amount of knowledge known to us continues to increase we cause a gap of what we know, what we think we know, and what we think we should know." Reading this section of our assignment for the week, reminds me of cycles of thinking I have experienced based on this class. It goes something like this. ...
I log into my goggle reader ...I find something interesting ...I follow links...I get excited...I'm learning ... this is cool .... I can really see how this is going to change the way I learn and process information...things are great! The next time I log on to my goggle reader...I skim through some information ...absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of information in front of me...there is too much here! ...I'll never be able to make sense of all this...this is crazy! The bottom line is I find myself alternating between excitement and learning and frustration and being absolutely overwhelmed!
I think I am beginning to see how social networking, web 2.0, or whatever you want to call all this can help teachers to become better collaborators. The idea that people go (or went) into education because they are solitary workers (let me close my door and work my magic!)is changing, people are craving collaboration in school communities built for solitary operators. I work in a district in which many of us are really ready for collaboration we know what we want to do together, we know the importance of working collaboratively, all we need is time. If we can find that time asynchronously then maybe with the web we can make it happen. That's enough from me for now.
Great thinking...how can these tools help you fine the "time" you need?
ReplyDeleteAs we continue through this course I challenge you to think about how these tools can actually make time and not take time from people. What makes them so powerful? What makes them easy? How can you use these in your own profession? What is one tool...just one that you want to focus in on and really understand?
As for the reader...I have those days. Log in...see there are over 1000 things I need to read.
I take a deep breath and click the "Mark all as read" button.
Life is good!
The best thing to know that the cream always raises...or the good stuff continues to come back up again and again. So don't feel the need to read everything now. You can read stuff when you need/want/ have to read it.
Some time ago...and these are of those blog posts that continues to come up again and again....I wrote on on Stages of PLN adoption. I'd be interested to hear your take on it.
http://www.thethinkingstick.com/?p=652