Reflection 3 - What Now?

The podcasts and information we have received during the second half of this course have been very global. There are so many implications about where technology could and should head in the future. I think as a district we don't have a "vision" of where we are heading and what we would like our schools to be technologically. I think it is time for a diverse stakeholder team to work on that.

As for me, I think I can start small. Certainly starting a wiki, a blog, and doing podcasts will be part of my year next year. But I think I have a responsibility to engage more of my colleagues in the possibilities. I will start with my grade level and see where I can go with them. I think that they are open minded but are not in general risk takers. I would also like to involve the special area teachers - Linda gave me some ideas on how the things I do could inform and benefit her teaching as well.

I would like to keep this blog going with reflections on my successes and trials as I go through this year. Is anyone else interested?

School 2.0

When I viewed the School 2.0 map, I was struck by how everyone is connected to technology in someway. This has it's plusses and minuses. I loved seeing people taking online courses (as I wrote in a previous post), I think this is something that will and needs to become more prevalent in our educational system. E-books? What are those? That definitly peeked my curiosity.

The stakeholder group was certainly inclusive but I keep coming back to the question of who are the leaders - who inspires the changes? Policy makers are often ignorant to the possibilities and technologists alone do not have the power(yet) to create the change. I think we need to create motivated teams to get the word out.

One drawback of the map for me was that everyone was connected. I do enjoy being disconnected at times. I think the more power we give technology the harder it will be for people to really let go of it sometimes. How do we find the balance?