Thing 23: Where do we go from here?
As I look back over this course, there have been indicators, not only that the world is changing for our students, but that the world has changed for our students. As teachers, not only do we need to consider and address these changes, we need to embrace these technologies in ways that are effective in meeting our obligations as both teachers and guides. Although the fundamentals of teaching will remain paramount to our profession as we venture on to Web 2.0 and beyond, our role as guide will be equally important to our students’ success.
I think back to an early blog post of mine, Thing 5, in which I refer to a high school student’s post. In Innovate or Die, Anthony Chivetta throws down the gauntlet to challenge his teachers to both accept and embrace the social network that already exists. Whether we pick up that glove and take up this challenge will determine how our students become responsible and effective users of tools that they already employ.
As far as employing the Web 2.0 tools to which I have been introduced through this course, I have already begun. Using Delicious has revolutionized the way I approach bookmarking and solved a dilemma for me. I intend to rely more heavily on Firefox as my Web browser, however for several years I’ve been bookmarking within Safari. With Delicious it doesn’t matter which browser I select; with any browser or any computer, my bookmarks are a couple of clicks away. Not only my bookmarks, the tagged bookmarks of countless colleagues are also at my fingertips.
I have also used Flickr to populate several of my Pre-First Library Links lessons with superb photographs of subjects as diverse as castles of Germany and animals of the Serengeti. Flickr, combined with Creative Commons, provides teachers and students alike with the means to legally access, contribute to, and use a phenomenal resource.
As promising as all of the Web 2.0 tools are, I feel that I must close with a note of caution when it comes to trusting online sites with anything that you consider important or irreplaceable. Always back up and store such items yourself. Although I did not loose any files associated with AOL’s Hometown, please read the irate responses of those who did.
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