Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking would definitely make life easier for accessing research and keeping sites readily accessible. As one who is constantly researching one thing or another for various papers, I would think that using a social bookmarking site to keep my sites organized and easily accessible would be the way to go. Up until now I have been very traditional in conducting and storing my research. I can also see how social bookmarking can be useful in the classroom for both students and teachers. Teachers can use these sites to post readings for students, as well as use the students bookmarks to verify the validity of the websites they are using for source information. It seems to me the development of social bookmarking is a strong indication that how we gather and manage information is a continually evolving process.

Amazed

Although I should not have been, I was amazed by the video, A Vision of k-12 Students today. What really amazed me was the amount of time kids (or anyone actually) are spending on computers, using IPods, and other technologies to advance themselves and their education. Not only the amount of time using technology , but how little time using the more traditional methods of old, like reading a book or a newspaper. Not that this is a bad thing, but different. I say I should not have been surprised by this because having a 17 year old son who practically lives on his computer, I had not realized until just recently just how much of his school work and related school social life revolved around this technology. He is most definitely a digital native.
I also found quite interesting that in researching lesson plans for this weeks assignment that in virtually every plan I looked at there was at least one piece directly related to or requiring the use of a computer with Internet access for research or some type of project completion.
In the article "Teaching & Learning with the Read/Write Web," author Wesley A. Fryer makes the comparison of today's technology and how our ideas are communicated with that of the invention of the printing press in the 1450's and the part it played in the dissemination of Martin Luther's Theses on the Catholic church in 1571. A duly appropriate comparison considering the magnitude of the impact these technologies have had and are having on society and education today.

Thus Far

What can I say? I was unaware of the multitude of information out there and the technologies that have developed. As a fifty year old grad. student I can see that I have a lot of catching up to do. One might say that I am technologically challenged in many ways. I can see that it will take me a while to get the hang of using some of these new (new to me anyway) systems, and forms of relating information and learning. Things have changed dramatically since the days of when I started my bakery engineering company and used a Commodore 64 to generate the billing. I find it interesting as well that along with the advances in technology a new tech terminology has evolved becoming at home in our culture and eveyday language.

What is a blog? Well by reconning at this point, a blog is an alternative form of communicating ideas between groups of individuals where anyone can be involved. In the classroom a teacher may post a lesson that can be used interactive with studeents. Attachments may be placed on the blog for the students or parents to examine and comment on.