What I learned today

Today I "tuned in" to a webinar that Atomic Learning did on Web 2.0 tools. (I can't say I participated very actively, so I used "tuned in." I was a little disappointed in the beginning since it felt like advertising for Atomic Learning. But then they got into the philosophy behind teaching with Web 2.0 tools and it was more interesting.

The two speakers they featured were teachers using many of the read/write web sites that we learned about in 23 Things on a Stick. I could even follow the jargon since I had been introduced to these tools. It sounded like these teachers were out at the forefront in their use of wikis, ning and blogs. Their students they felt were much more engaged and actively learning. It was interesting that one of the teachers has his students teach teachers. What a great learning experience for both.

I couldn't help but notice that both were at high schools that supported one-to-one computing. One teacher has a class of senior that are issued laptops to use their entire senior year! They did say that these ways of teaching could work in a classroom that only has a few computers and students just take their turn during the week. Even that level of technology seems out of my reach right now. We still have labs that teachers schedule and as far as assigning a blog entry, many of our students don't own computers. It makes the digital divide look like it's getting wider.

It seems it still takes some personal experience using these tools to have school board members or teachers really understand what they could mean to their students.