The idea of extending awareness of students' projects and progress using technology has certainly been a wonderful advancement for families, students and teachers. As the text explains, "Digital tools make it easy for students to share their work and exchange ideas with diverse audiences, including family members and peers, local community members, and even the much wider world" (127). Because of this wide accessibility, it has become easier for students to see how their work can make an impact on the world around them. When students work on a project, they are able to advertise it, structure it and advance it in even more ways than many of us ever thought possible.
For example, when I was in high school, social media was just emerging. My business class at vocational school was the first place that ever employed this technology into the curriculum. The teacher had the students organize a charity golf outing which involved fundraising, advertising creation, and getting into with a targeted group of people to spread the word. We used social media by making a page devoted to the event and directing people to use it for the business we were conducting. We saved a lot of time and money on poster making and advertising as a result of this, but the ones that we did do involved using new technologies to make the best looking, professional ones that we could. I learned so much about technology and it's uses in this class and although this might seem commonplace, I can assure that it is not and certainly was rare at this time.
Using this technology to further the goal already set before us made it interesting and engaging. Furthermore, it gave it purpose. We could see the results of our labor long before the golf outing ever took place. We had a steady means of communication with our teacher, supporters, families and business partners the entire time and this was absolutely revolutionary. In normal school, we probably would have written a theoretical plan of action and never would have gotten the opportunity to experience all of this on a higher level.
The chapter also posed a very important questions which is eminent of any great teacher, "What happens when the learning community expands to include not only one classroom or one school, but participants from distant countries and continents" (129)? The exchange of information via the internet allows this problem to quickly be solved. Teachers and students can readily access additional resources and display their work so that this communication and expansion of ideas may occur. The only problem that I have seen with this is when it does NOT happen. For whatever reason, teachers often become too comfortable in their learning circles alone and will not expand to discover others. This entirely limits the students as well as the teacher and is not conducive to a classroom of constant discovery. If we expect ours students to think outside of the box, we must not only give them the resources to do such, but force ourselves to do the same.
Sabrina, I enjoyed reading your discussion on chapter eight. You put a lot of thought into what you wrote. I liked what you pulled from page 127 which discussed the importance of digital tools. That was something that stuck out to me because it does make it easy for students to share their work and to also exchange ideas which allows them to grow as learners and be in more control of their learning because sharing something with a peer can bring up new ideas which can start an interest for the student making their learning ongoing. I also enjoyed your last paragraph as it brought up a good question. I again enjoyed reading your discussion, and enjoyed this chapter just as much as the others.
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