In his blog post “Personal Learning Networks”, Will Richardson writes about a class in Snow Lake, Manitoba that regularly connects to the world using the World Wide Web. It’s really a very interesting read and the teacher, Clarence Fisher has his own blog about the idea of the Thin Walled Classroom, called Remote Access. The idea that both Richardson and Fisher are talking about is the idea that we can use the World Wide Web to connect to other people and expand our learning.
Many people wonder how do we as teachers provide the opportunity for students to connect to the world, but not regulate what they are learning. After all, you can find websites that say the Holocaust never happened, so shouldn’t we regulate what students have access to?
My short answer to that is “No”. We shouldn’t limit what students have access to. In fact what we ought to do is to let them have access to material that might be controversial, but then use that as an opportunity to discuss with them how to evaluate information that is on the web. We ought to be teaching them that when you read something, maybe you shouldn’t take it at face value. You need to evaluate it and decide if what is being said is really true.
I digress, the point of this is that we don’t have all of the answers. In my last post I talked about how we aren’t experts on technology, that we need to look to others for help if we don’t know how to use a program. The same idea applies to our teaching as well. We don’t have all the answers, but working together, with people around the world we can find answers to the questions we have. There are other teachers out there who are teaching the same things we are, so why not connect with them to find answers to problems we are having. They might have ideas on how to approach the content that we haven’t even thought of.
The same thing is true with our students. As we design more and more authentic assessments for students, they are going to have questions about how to find answers to questions they have. We, as teachers, can facilitate them finding those answers through some of our own connections.
One idea for this is to use Facebook. Search for teachers on Facebook, or using the Facebook page “Facebook in the Education”, post a request on the wall to connect with other teachers. If you don’t have a Facebook account and don’t want to create one, join pages like Classroom 2.0 and join some of the discussion groups there. The world wide web has a variety of ways to connect to other professionals.
This is especially true if you are working in a building by yourself in a content area. In fact, in his blog post “Twitter for Singletons”, Bill Ferriter talks about how you can use Twitter to get some help with professional issues. I have one colleague who routinely, when she has a question, turns to Twitter and within minutes has answers to her question. Why? Because she has connected to the world around her using Web 2.0 tools and hasn’t tried to hide from them, but has embraced them.
Now, I think I am just rambling, so I am going to stop. But before I do, the point is this. Use the web for both you and your students to connect to the world and find answers to those burning…and not so burning questions that you might have.
