A Whole New World

Lots to comment on... first, regarding Marc Prensky's digital native/digital immigrant idea: I'd like to think there's a middle ground. I don't know, some kind of digital immigrant who has been in the "digital country" for most of her life; or a digital immigrant who is eager to lose his accent and completely assimilate. Am I an immigrant in denial?

Next, the Bruce article: He expresses an interesting concern about losing sight of the students as the focus shifts to the technology (16). James seems to express concern over this in his recent post as well http://iregretnothing.blogspot.com/. I think this concern could apply to any teaching tool. If the teacher becomes too focused on the lesson, the movie, the song, the poem, the reading, the writing s/he is teaching, s/he is in danger of losing sight of how the lesson is working within the classroom. I can recall more than one occasion when I had to change plans because what I thought would be a thoroughly engaging lesson just didn't work at that time.
Bruce concludes with an emphasis on the importance encouraging and guiding our students towards "learning how to learn" (18). I believe that one of the most valuable tools we can give our students is the freedom to find out what works for them. We do this by provided varied instruction, which provides an opportunity for our students to discover their own learning style and strategies for success. We are teaching them a valuable lesson: Sometimes things will come easily to you. Great. How will you handle the things that don't? I feel like I am constantly evolving as a learner and this class is certainly provocative in that way.

Finally, Richardson's book. The way this book is written works very well for me. It's accessible and exciting. His explanations of how things work and how to implement them in the classroom are clear and concise. Here are a few random thoughts about the reading...
I am a BIG fan of collaborating so learning (yes, learning for the first time) about wikis was invigorating. I immediately thought of how hard it was to find common time to meet with other teachers to develop lessons. If I had only known about this sooner!
I'm wondering about the public/private issues regarding this idea, but imagine meeting with your grade level team and/or your department via a blog!? I'm sure this is being done somewhere to the great convenience of all involved. It would be great to be able to share concerns about and successful strategies for helping specific students. It would be great to communicate on a daily(!) basis about students' needs. It seems like these technologies could make things a lot easier for students, teachers, parents, administrators - everyone. I am interested in being able to create private spaces online for my classes mainly because of concerns about public access. However, isn't it important and of value to get students into more public arenas? I feel conflicted. Students could (and need to) learn so much in terms of dealing with public space and being a part of global community emphasizes the significance of their contributions. Still, there is a sense of risk...
Learning about RSS was also eye-opening. I was thinking, "How can Alex and Karen keep up with all these blogs? How can I find out when someone posts on the class blog? What about keeping up with my classmates' blogs?" Hooray! A solution! I went right to Bloglines and signed up. It took a little while initially, but will save me time from here on out.
More reactions: pg. 96 - The Social Web - Wow. Once you become fluent in these things you could provide more individual instruction and maybe (gasp!) save some time with planning and feedback.
pg. 98 - a computer program that puts the sources you use in MLA format!? Am I dreaming? How long has this existed!?

ps/ just did spell check on this post and wiki and blog are not in the dictionary...I guess there's always room for improvement.