This chapter was inspiring. Just like Trudy said this morning, it was a chapter that even though most of the sites might not work any more, there is still the element of inspiration and a collaborative community of good ideas. Reading the examples in the chapter made me think of one of the schools that I have run across within the past month while surfing the web. I believe that the school is in South Carolina, somewhere. I don't remember all of the details of the program, but two of the things that I do remember is that they used PDAs to do a running record for students. This recorded all of the information and grouped it all together without using paper. Furthermore, I also remember that this particular school was a key proponent of collaborative teaching. They welcomed the idea of sharing ideas and planning together. I really like this aspect. This is a theme that, I believe, is a main factor in the success of Web 2.0. The shift is moving from "look what I thought of" to "look what we did together with the resources around us" and better is "look at this idea that I found, that may be helpful to you in your teaching". I think that as a community of educators we must look on how we can help each other and push down the pride issue. In the chapter, Lemon Grove School District must have had some of this environment because they were able to train 20% of their teachers each year, in order to train everyone over the course of 5 years. For this model to work there would have to be a low turn-over rate for the teachers. This is a good model to follow for administration, of which I would someday like to be a part of.
I really did enjoy a lot of the content area resources that were available in this chapter. I know that over the course of this course we will look at most of the sites, but I appreciated the idea for the use of wikis with independent novel studies. As a future gifted teacher I would like to use this in my classroom because of the higher order thinking skills and the fact that this could go outside the classroom, but still achieve the same objective. The students could be serviced, even if there is not a lot of funding for this program.
I know that I am not very old, but some of the things in this book make me feel a bit old. The component about Journalism and broadcasting made it to appear as if more and more schools have programs and equipment to have a morning show. I remember when I was younger that the morning show was only for high schools and very rarely for Elementary schools. And if they were in Elementary schools, they were run by the administration. What an exciting advancement for the students to be a part of the growing technology community!
Finally, I would like to point out a comment on ThinkQuest. I am not very familiar with the program, but the discussion on this site in class this morning got me thinking. Dr. Krug mentioned grants that were given by this organization. I would imagine that there are others like this organization that give grants. I have heard of some in the past and I know that they are out there. My concern, and one of my objectives within the next year, is to become a little more informed in writing grants. Perhaps there is a "Dummies guide to grants" I could purchase or find free online. That is something I could look into in the future.
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