I've taken this morning to add to my Google Reader, which is the RSS aggregator that I use to note blogs and blog posts that I want to track for future reading. For those of you who are new to this idea, an aggregator will automatically visit the sites you mark and collect the most recent (or ALL) of the posts located there. It's a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening in certain fields or on particular topics of interest.
Rather than having to bookmark and visit every site you use for news or information, I use Google Reader to quickly scan what sites or categories have new postings. This morning, for example, Carla Beard's "Web English Teacher" newsletter, which was delivered via email, prompted a visitation trail to three new sites, two of which I decided were good enough to add to my Reader list.
For me, this is just another example of the world getting flatter. Without email and the Internet, I probably would not have picked up two of the books that I will be sharing with you in the future--and these were the direct result of my employing the basic themes in Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat. He suggests that in order to keep up in a world where distance is no longer an insurmountable obstacle, we must relearn HOW TO LEARN. It is our generation that must make the break between how we were taught and how we teach. The old phase "becoming a lifelong learner" is no longer just the words we place in a mission statement to make it sound good. In fact, it appears that lifelong learning through personal curiosity will become the key that marks the successful individual.
Accepting that the world is flat challenges ideas of a teacher as the fountain of knowledge. I have come to understand--and it hasn't been an easy path, I assure you--that I am doing my students a disservice if I fail to teach them
- how to work with others to discover knowledge,
- how to decide if that knowledge is credible, and
- how to share it with others in an engaging manner.
According to most thinkers in the field today, this type of classroom instruction represents the four most important skills for the future: critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration.
Bottom line: Spend a hour or so reading some blogs . . . Do a blog search at Technorati.com (try sorting by "authority" which is the word they use for rankings) or Google Blog Search or Best of the Web blog directory. Or ask me which blogs I subscribe to, and I'll be happy to share through Google Reader!
1 comment:
I love the piece that emphasizes how important it is for the proper training to be given for the product to become its most effective.
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