Thing #7 Thoughts on Tech

After viewing the Social Networking Revolution video (see video in previous post) my first response was to be overwhelmed! The amount of information, the rate of speed at which it is being accessed and the skills that are needed to navigate successfully in this new world kind of blow my mind. I have been playing around for the last few days trying to figure out how all of this fits into my teaching today. I realized this year that with so much information on the web, many of the projects and assignments that I used to rely upon need some upgrading and expanding in order to keep their rigor. For example: the history projects that are part of the TCI curriculum are now all posted on line (another teacher's web site) and by googling "Egyptian Spy Journal" the entire assignment comes up complete with all of the information that students used in class to take their notes and create their spy journals. Sounds great except for the fact that plagiarism is extremely easy to succumb to all, the notes do not need to be taken in class anymore, and the project has become less rigorous. 
On the other hand, the tremendous amounts of time I used to spend searching for links and websites for my students has now shifted to the student. I love the fact that they are finding outstanding resources themselves and sharing it with the rest of our class. As a matter of fact, one of the additions to my history assessment this year was the reflection, "In what ways have you furthered your thinking?" whereby students had to provide evidence of their own independent searching and growth. This created lots of internet resources to share and it came from them!