Reading All Weekend

This was an interesting weekend. I had decided at some point, that I was going to read David Warlick's 2¢ Worth blog. I find his ideas interesting and he seems to be thinking about the same stuff that we've been considering in terms of the ways that technology is used in classrooms. I had briefly seen him use the term "flat classroom" in one of his posts and, since I'm currently reading "The World is Flat" I wanted to see the roots of his use of the term. So I began to read his blog from the beginning which was November 2004...that was where I started on Friday night and I've been reading ever since, every chance I get. Since beginning to read his blog I have probably visited over 100 websites that were referred to, was introduced to the names and writings of a number of people who are thinking about technology use in schools and have written down the website addresses of a number of tools that have been referred to in reference to "Web 2.0" or the dynamic/collaborative web.

What I've come to learn is that I need to know more about blogs and blogging, more about wikis, more about RSS and podcasting/videocasting...more about more!

I've been struggling lately with the feeling as well as the fact that technology training per se has been more or less absent from my job duties over the past two years. Yet...over the past two years I've been involved in developing more ideas about technology use beyond just the pure knowledge of software tools. The problem is having a method of sharing this, supporting its use in the classroom beyond the 2 times per year professional development day. Those PDC days are drop and run days and we don't yet have a good mechanism for following up those discussions, that type of instruction. I'm looking for opportunities to be as much a learner in this as I'd like my fellow teachers to be.

My intention with this blog is to write. To write about what I'm learning and to write about my feelings, to get feedback from others, to collaboratively develop the ideas and thoughts we're working on and to see just where we can go with all of this.