As a young adult who has spent half of her life using the internet, I tend to take it for granted. Technology has been a huge part of my personal life, and has impacted my own learning, but I have yet to truly integrate it into my teaching. Will Richardson discusses how the read/write web has profoundly changed our lives. I completely agree, but I am part of "an educational system that is out of touch with the way students learn."
As Richardson points out, the vast majority of our students are extremely comfortable with technology. Many of them enjoy the opportunity to use new tools, and just play around and figure them out. In order to use them as part of our teaching, however, we must ourselves be comfortable with them. Many of the skills that are intuitive to a student of this technological generation must be learned by adults. I feel that until I am extremely comfortable with a tool, and feel able to answer any questions students might have in using it, I will have reservations about implementing the use of it in my classroom.
I know that teaching with technology sparks the interest of most students, but I wasn't aware that so many students feel that it is an extremely important part of education. I don't want to do my students a disservice by ignoring such valuable tools. I am also struck by Richardson's insight that "Giving students a chance to share their work with a global audience is an importat first step, but there is much more to it. It's the converstaions, the links, and the networks that grow from them afterward that really show us the profound implications for lifelong learning."
