Chapter 4 Reflections

This was a fun chapter to read! What brave teachers! What great ideas! I appreciate having this chapter to just have a spring board to work from. I am aware that some of these ideas will be considered dated by the time I read them. We're talking a lifetime of "commitment" issues that keep me from doing exactly what one of the interviewees suggested. On Pg. 82 Cheryl Oakes states:"As any teacher of technology has experienced, as soon as you learn a new tool and feel comfortable enough to begin teaching it in your classroom, that technology is old and you are moving on!! Well, be brave and take a risk, our new digital learners have different strategies, different needs and totally different outcomes that WORK!" We're talking a whole lot of mind shifting going on!!

This is the chapter where I get excited about the prospects. I am inspired by people's willingness to try something that might fail. With the limited amount of hours in a teaching day, it is difficult to justify spending precious moments on something that might flop. I stop dwelling on the obstacles/challenges.

At our elementary last year we had a difficult stretch with students bullying and denigrating others on my space pages. I'm curious about a digital story telling project or set of ads that could be created to explain the ramifications of such actions.

I certainly thought I had reached my "searching" max but I'm excited to look at a few projects noted in this chapter. The Soc. Stud. section has several like http://greece.teachingmatters.org/
This site is an absolute hoot! I have already sent the link off to my fourth grade teachers! I will be dying to know if they would like to explore this together. There are several interesting topics at www.teachingmatters.org. The writing project sounds fascinating.

I thought the Math Blog described on pg. 92-93 sounded quite productive. The pressure to perform at the board is removed and the thinking is actually reflective because the problem can be addressed over the course of an entire week. The teacher is able to see the progression of thinking over the course of the week. Students are forced to communicate their thinking clearly. Great idea.