I came across this cool graphic of the "Networked Teacher" and it immediately made me think of all of us, as pre-service teachers, learning how to become as 'wired' as we possibly can so that we can connect on many levels to our students, our schools, our communities.
Part of me wonders, though, with all of this networking....are we going to stretch ourselves too thin and make it difficult to make any TRUE connections if we're trying to do too much?
4 comments:
What an insightful post, Sarah! Wow!
I think it's important to keep up with the "times" and to use technology in a classroom - students use it to learn and we should take advantage of that. However, I think it's also important to pick and choose which ones you like the best and take a more "balanced" approach so that you, and the students, don't become too overwhelmed.
Teachers have so much on their plate - it's really overwhelming to think about sometimes!
I think it's important to use all the resources that are available - blogs, family, colleagues, media, wikis, etc. - as a support system. In my opinion, we can't approach them with the expectation of using them all and doing magnificent things with each...it's just not realistic! We should find the resources that help us and our students learn best. It should be about quality, not quantity. That being said, it would useful to mix things up every once in a while to try something new and see if it is helpful. :)
I have to agree with Laura and Samantha! Luckily in our program (and especially this course) we have the opportunity to at least be introduced to many different resources. I think it's our responsiblity as teachers(and students) to continually be exploring new ideas but like Samantha said above, it's about finding what will best help us and our students.
This makes me think of my inquiry of teaching strategies. When students didn't know the strategy well enough they were focusing too much on using it rather than learning the content. I think with us it is much the same. If we throw ourselves into this thinking oh i have to do this, and this, and this, and this or my students arn't going to be enriched we will definitely stretch much to thin. I think that it is important to do few things well rather than a bundle of things and just 'make it through.' I agree with the above comments, but don't implement unless you are absolutely sure of the reasons why it will benefit your students at that time.
Post a Comment