Assignment #2: Reflections on sources

In reflecting on the 4 sources given, there are a few commonalities. But first, I'd like to bring up my thoughts and feelings after taking a look. Honestly, the articles made me feel a bit exhausted. Brian Alexander's article referred to his schedule of "info-wrangling..."

This part is a bit of a rant, so, feel free to skip ahead...

He mentioned that he attempts to do most of his wrangling before noon. Most days, by noon, I'm as worn out as I can be. I've taught 4 full classes and driven an hour just to get to work. I suppose I could have time for podcasts on my drive, but I would not have time to keep up with the RSS feeds. With all the hats I wear, I teach, I have meetings for at least an hour after school. 5 o'clock PM is my first real break of the day. If I don't have to help coach basketball until 6 or later, I can drive home. By the time I get home, it is time to cook and prepare for the next work day. Then, graduate work gets taken care of. By that time, I'm looking at 10 o'clock. Working an RSS feed as large as Mr. Alexander's would be near impossible for me. My size RSS feed could be handled in the 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there that I find during the day. But, honestly, I don't have time to keep up with the social media that I actually want to keep up with. I like the idea of a PLN, but it seems like it will be hard to maintain.

Sorry for ranting, back to the topic at hand....

The sources given all refer to using "new" ways of teaching to keep things interesting and effective. One article, "Creating Classrooms We Need..." mentioned 8 ways to make your classroom more effective and up-to-date with a coming pedagogical renaissance, as it were. We are shifting to an inquiry based learning environment in many schools across America, which is great... except that the children are not yet prepared for it. Things will be tough until inquiry based learning is started in the lower schools and then continued into the upper. I attempt many of the strategies mentioned in the article and most fail, but some are working--slowly but surely.

Karen Lirenman's "The Journey..." was an interesting read about digital literacy vs. digital fluency. I really liked her analogy to speaking another language and being able to think in another language--which is a hard enough thing to do alone. Like her, many of us are attempting to use more technology in the classroom, but like she wrote: it's not so much about the tool as it is about the use of what you have. My school does not have the tools and most of the kids do not have access to the tools, but with some ingenuity, I can make it work. I've been experimenting with a website called Celly. Cel.ly allows me to text students and them to text me without anyone needing to give away their personal information. I can group students based on classes and they can chat with each other. It has a lot of potential. But, many of the parents and some of the admins are against my using it. There are "too many complications that could arise." So, I'm trying to work through the barriers using what I have.

The Infowhelm video was pretty interesting; lots of facts I did not know. But, the questions in the end are questions I work to answer and get the students involved in all the time. Again though, the students aren't interested in that. They are so accustomed to rote learning, that they can't question and find for themselves. They think they want to be told and given the answers, which may be true. Life is so immediate and right-now that the students don't want to have to work to get the answers. They want to be given what they want without the work involved.

It's tough out there. Hopefully, this class can help me get my head around all of it and make some sense of those 500+ Exabytes of information!