Read/Write Web

It's here to stay. I'm here to stay. Coincidence? I don't think so. Being born in the last year of the Baby-Boomer era (I know. I can't believe it either.), I do like face-to-face contact. It's how I grew up. You have a question, you go see your teacher. We didn't even have microwaves or CD players for God's sake! I took typing class in high school--that's right, on a typewriter. However, here I go. I'm on my way to being an educator of the 21st century, well into the "new millennium", if you will. I will speak "their" language. I will make it mine.

Our perspectives are definitely different. There's no way they couldn't be, but all is not lost. I'm on my way to opening my mind to a whole new world of communication, education, and life. Technology. It's all there for me. I just need to embrace it, and hold on to it, and teach with it as if it's my right arm. I can do it, and I will. I'm on my way to influencing and enlightening a whole, new generation--the Net Gen, and the generation after that, and the generation after that.

We sat quietly, for hours and listened to our teachers, and watched them write with chalk on the blackboard for hours, I mean hours! We didn't give our input. We listened and believed. There was no multi-tasking. There was no bricolage. There was no figuring out stuff on our own. We copied what was on the blackboard. We memorized it. We took tests. We got report cards. There you have it--public school in the seventies. Sounds fun, huh? I don't think so.

I am so excited to become part of the educators' world of today. It's a whole new world and I'm going to be part of it. Technology. The read/write web and all that it consists of and is capable of. It's mine to use and thrive in, as a student and as a teacher. How lucky am I?

The R/W tools available to today's teachers are amazing and limitless. Blogging, wikis, online rubric construction, podcasts, web cams, and streaming video are all examples of what's out there for teachers to use and thrive in the Net Gen world of education. RSS, or real simple syndication, is a read/write tool that allows authors to syndicate their content so that readers can subscribe and collect all the content they want, rather than searching for and visiting each individual site. This is made possible by an aggregator.

Blogging gives students a forum on which to write freely, receive feedback, and become motivated to write more and better because of the potential world wide audience. Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world. Online rubric construction is a tool used by teachers to share assessment ideas and strategies. Podcasts, web cams, and streaming video, provide a combination of audio and visual interaction among and between users.

Google Docs, formerly Writely, is a free and collaborative alternative to Microsoft Word. It is used mostly in k-12 education. Google Docs can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection and can be worked on collaboratively, therefore it is considered an R/W program. However, students find more use in Word because they know how to use it better. I have, personally, never used this tool.

I am beginning to learn that student-centered, project-based instruction incorporating R/W tools needs to be today's educators' goal. And that any stability other than acceptance of instability is insufficient. Here I go...