Week 2 reflection

This week was a bit of an eye opener for me.  It was a well needed reminder that we need to look much more carefully at resources before we use them.   So often we are in a hurry to find the resources we need to share with the students that we don't take the proper time to fully evaluate and explore them.   I hate to admit it, but this has happened to me.  I think I found the perfect website, I have my students engaged and focused on the SMART Board, and then come to find out the website wasn't all that I thought it would be.  So, naturally, I turn it into a quick lesson for the kids on properly evaluating websites before you use them.  Sadly, my students are only 8 and 9 so much of that discussion is lost on them.  But, I hope someday they will remember what I have said.

I am really excited to be learning about wikis this week.  We have several teachers in our building that talk about them, but we never have the time to share and discuss.  I am hoping that this would be something that I could incorporate into my classes.

I found the article, "Digital Natives" this week to be especially interesting.  I think it is an article that should be shared with all educators.  Often we say that students don't have the attention span to do some things (and yes I do realize that there are a few students out there whom this is true for), but the reality is that the students are not truly engaged in the lesson.  I feel that it is our job as educators to provide quality learning experiences that foster a desire to keep learning.  I look forward to learning more tools in this class that can help to engage my students more in our daily lessons.