Will Richardson / Rob Mancabelli

The presentation as a whole was very concise and easy to follow. I felt like I was right there listening to them. I also appreciated the links that were provided along with what the Will and Rob were talking about. I followed along with the Nata Village and Guerilla Season discussions when they came up.

I took detailed notes on this presentation, and having reviewed my notes, I've highlighed three main points that the pair make:

1: BUILDING A NETWORK- the students are no longer connected simply with the other students in the class; they are connected to the entire world! The Flat Classroom Project is a perfect example of this: with a few clicks, students in Georgia were connected to students in Bangladesh!

2: BENEFITS TO TEACHER AND STUDENT-By engaging in technology-laden curriculum, students obviously benefit because they are learning what they want to learn and not just what the teacher wants to teach. The role of the teacher also evolves as they no longer need to learn to tailor one lesson to twenty-something students, but they must learn to tap into each individual student's learning abilities and styles.

3: IMPLEMENTATION- A few people in our class have raised valid concerns on the availability of diverse technologies in our future schools. The Richardson/Mancabelli duo do not let us off the hook that easily: they give specific examples of teachers who are using their resources (Ex: the Guerilla Season blog) These teachers probably had only one or two computers in their classrooms and most likely stayed after school to use lab computers to blog. I also appreciated the various steps that schools could take to ease into a solid technology program. These steps include leadership, professional development, reflection, support, and access.

Two very specific points that I'd like to highlight:

1- By blogging, someone besides the teacher will be looking at the students' work. They will be more careful with what they say and strive to better articulate their ideas.

2- Teachers need to ease themselves carefully into new technologies, and they can't expect to use the technologies in the classroom until they themselves are comfortable

Using technology is not just something that we can delve into and come out with some grandiose idea (and ability!) of how we can use technology in our classrooms (or maybe we can?) That's why this class is good for me (and many others I'm sure) because I feel like I'm breaking into technology at my own pace with nobody, namely students, expecting anything of me. I can learn and fail and succeed on my own time. I'll figure it all out eventually...