· ````My pre-college education occurred pre-Web so using
technology in class wasn’t even a glimmer in any teacher’s eye at that point.
Teachers used overhead projectors, CHALKboards, and mimeograph copies. As I got
into high school, mainframe computers became more common but were still
basically a business item and not for use in the classrooms for teaching. Going
back to college for education, found me in a more technologically-available
environment but it was still pre-Smart Board and pre-Web 2.0. Presentations
were designed for Powerpoint and interaction and collaboration were designed
into individual activities but still contained within the classroom
environment. Any virtual excursions outside the classroom occurred through
email and electronic pen pal systems. Research was still done through paper
with some searching done in electronic databases, but you had to be at the
library to use those resources. This new incarnation of schooling at PSU finds
me only setting foot in the campus library twice in a year and that is only to
physically borrow texts for some courses. I wouldn’t even be there if they were
available online for free or if I could afford to buy the books from an online
bookseller like Amazon or Abebooks. I have not met any of my classmates or
professors in person unless I already had other dealings outside the college
environment with them, so even though I may know what people look like and have
learned lots about them through their intros and posts shared through class, I
wouldn’t really recognize them if I passed them on the street somewhere. It
seems that the bigger our social circles become through technology, the less
personal and long-lasting those connections can be. That being said, I loved
what Wesch did in his classrooms to create stronger personal connections
especially in a class of 200 where you would be lucky to know the name of the
person to either side of you and your professor would only know you as a name
on the roster.
Wesch says at 19:15 “RSS taught us that information can find
US” and that to me is a good thing because I don’t have time to check up on
everything and everyone that I want to stay updated with/about. The one problem
with that though is the illusion that we are truly informed because we are
receiving up-to-date information but it may not be the only information
available on the topic because we haven’t subscribed to the RSS feed of other
sources with similar or opposing information. http://practicalpedagogy.blogspot.com/2011/06/pros-and-cons-of-as-rss-feedssocial.html
blogs about similar issues and this article goes into depth about the pros and
cons: http://www.llrx.com/features/rss.htm.
One of the most important messages I take away from the
Wesch’s video is the thought that we need to create meaningful connecting and
significance for our students. Wesch mentions Cooley’s “Looking Glass Self” (http://www.popularsocialscience.com/2013/05/27/the-looking-glass-self-how-our-self-image-is-shaped-by-society/)
and I think that is a very apt correlation. We define ourselves based on how we
connect and with whom we connect and without those connections our personal
definition may lack the grounding we need to flourish. For myself, I know I am
a teacher but because I am not officially a faculty member (I am a specialist!)
I feel like an illegitimate staff member. I teach but I’m not a teacher. I
fight that image in my mind and it does cause me to take a step back or garner
support before moving forward as I would if I felt a legitimate member of the
faculty. The more one feels a part of the group, the more secure they feel to
contribute to collaborations especially if those contributions include
challenges to group ideas. One area where we may feel disconnected is when our
students seem more at ease with technology but as Wesch states “there are no
natives here” and we can’t assume that students know how to effectively
use the media just because they can use it for entertainment.
Wesch demonstrated how to change from a teacher-led,
authoritative environment to a collaborative, student-driven, media-rich
portal. I hope to incorporate some of his ideas in my own library classes
especially in the upper elementary classes. I especially like the idea of
students taking notes online in a shared document and filling in a shared vocab
list. Both of these reinforce student understanding through collaborative
communication as well as providing an assessment tool that can drive the formal
testing. Another “innovation” he used was the sandbox that replaced the
syllabus. How better to help students create connections and understanding but
to have them work together to guide the discussions to answer the essential
questions. I want to use that approach, in a modified form, with my upper
elementary students as we use a model book, Baby Bear Counts One, to guide our
research with the end result being a student-produced counting book that share
important scientific information with primary grade students. We will not be
quite as online or technology-based but
Wesch says at the end of “A Portal to Media Literacy” that “technology is
secondary to collaboration” so we will be focusing on the collaboration with
technology as a background element.
