Finally . . . The Podcast

My Podcast

Tinker, Tinker, Little Star

     I have done it, no I am not talking about Tweeting or Facebooking because in all honesty both of those scare me. No, I haven't recently discovered a postcard that I constructed on the main page of postsecret.com.  No, I am not queen of podcasting or Evernoting or linking my blog to another.  Instead, I have officially started to use my blog as a means of cultivation.  Cultivation of my thoughts, cultivation of ideas and my Google Reader (AH!)  that is just pure cultivation of the highest degree.  Not only am I cultivating things that interest me like DIY (I am a sucker for a good DIY) and cooking, but also resources and words of wisdom from educators who have tested the water before.  Now, I know what you are thinking, Lindsay we needed to do that weeks ago, seriously that's not that exciting.  But, see, the thing is, I have finally begun to understand blogging as something enriching, not something assigned.  Yes, I have tinkered with my blog a bit, but until this week, I hadn't taken a good hard look at random peoples' blogs to help me refine my thoughts and ideas.  Until this weekend, my Google Reader was relatively barren, with me rapidly scrolling through 90% of things to get them unbolded - side note, I am not sure what it is about bolding that puts me on high alert and in the mindset that I have to unbold this and I have to unbold it fast.
     So, tinkering for me this week wasn't trying out something brand new, instead it was working with something that I was somewhat familiar with.  I think this is equally as important as figuring out something new.  More videos were watched, blogs visited, words defined through comparing blogs this week than in the past 6 weeks combined.  When I started the class, I don't honestly think I understood how much energy the blog takes.  Initially it was just a place to type words, but over my time in the class it has become a sanctuary of words, of thoughts, of ideas, of like-minded ideas from like-minded people.  Tinkering this week wasn't about how much I could learn about something new, but rather it was about figuring out how to make something that I have been using work more to my advantage.  I honestly couldn't stop wandering from site to site looking for similarities and differences, searching for common threads to draw people closer than their physical locations would suggest.  Tinkering for me actually is a lot like the song title I remixed, "Tinker, Tinker little star, how I wonder what you are (technology=unknown), up above the world so high (Signal-sending-space-satellites), like a diamond in the sky (Internet is definitely worth more than a diamond/Big Brother?/Something shiny that catches our attention?)" Perhaps that is a bit of a stretch, but I think you get what I am saying  . . . I hope.

Grappling 'Til The End

     As this literacies and technologies class is drawing to an end, I realize that my grappling has become very different over the last few weeks.  Initially, grappling was something that I was doing with the text and myself, trying to strike a balance between understanding the theoretical reasoning behind having technology in the classroom and figuring out where I stood on the barometer of technology implementation in the classroom.  However, as the weeks have ticked by, I have come to notice that my impenetrable outer shell protecting me from technological invasion has become weaker.  Now, when I read the theory of Lankshear and Knoble or the practical application courtesy of Will Richardson, I don't find myself skeptically proceeding from paragraph to paragraph, sighing each time a technology is discussed and its significance is defended.  Instead, I read what they are saying and think about how I can take their information and make it work for me.  I think this is the biggest change that I have undergone throughout these six or so weeks.  Instead of me trying to fit myself into technology, I see how I can fit technology to my needs.  Perhaps why I was so apprehensive in the beginning is because I viewed technology as an all or nothing deal, either I used it or I didn't, end of story.  But, as I have come to learn, it's not about all or nothing, it is about what you use and how you use it. Sure there are lots of classrooms that may be all or nothing, and I am sure they work quite well using that framework. However, that is not how I have begun to envision my class.  

After speaking with Paul Bogush, reading Lankshear and Knoble, speaking with peers and tinkering with the technology myself, I have come to the conclusion that although technology is still a very scary thing I am willing to give it a shot, in very small, manageable doses at first.  Rather than seeing technology as something that can be supplemented to make a class more enjoyable, I am SLOWLY beginning to see technology and education as codependent.  Students are capable of using the Internet to produce interesting, well thought out creations as opposed to using it to rapidly find the quick version of last nights reading that wasn’t completed.  Perhaps my difficulty with technology isn’t that it will be used in my classroom, but instead it is because when I think of technology I think of how it was used when I was a student – read: only used to play games to fill gaps of time, or send us off to research something without even knowing how to tell the difference between a credible and a non-credible source.  Rather than keep myself in the past, I need to allow myself to catch up with the times and not be afraid to have things go less than smooth in the classroom.  Technology is as much about being literate in a hyper-connected world as it is about taking risks and the willingness to have things go really really bad.  Learning comes from experience and if I don’t allow myself or my students to experience what the technology has to offer, I am doing them and myself a huge disservice as an educator and as a citizen of the world.

         The final chapter of Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms is titled “What It All Means,” and as I was rereading it in preparation for our discussion, I found myself having a very different reaction compared to when I was reading the opening chapters.  In this chapter, Richardson talks about 10 “Big Shifts” in how to go about teaching content in this technological world.  And, although each “Big Shift” held something valuable, the shift that stuck with is “Teaching is Conversation, Not Lecture” (p. 151).  I think this is rooted in my desire to be different than the teachers that I had, nestled carefully in the desire to inspire students to be lifelong learners.  The exchange of information is education in itself, but when we open the opportunity for exchange to the world, the possibilities for individual enrichment (let’s not call it education) are endless.