teaching kids and saving trees
After coming home many nights or staying late at school with mounds and mounds of papers to grade, I have cursed the inventor of paper and hoped for a time when technology would be integrated comprehensively in the middle and high school classrooms. We can feel that time coming but still have doubts of a smooth transition. One of the biggest complications I see is demographics. How can every single student in my middle school classroom benefit from the use of technology in the classroom when they don't even have computers at home?
I cannot solve this problem today, but I can give students the opportunity to use technology and save some trees. This blog is a start. Students can write their response to a question on paper, or they can respond to the blog post right here. They can write an essay on paper, or they can type it and post it right here. We'll see how this goes.
Maybe I can help a few students find their voices as they use technology as their new avenue of exploration.
I think blogs are a great tool for peer reviews of each other's work through comments. Hopefully we will get a wireless netbook cart at Southaven Middle School soon. With the installation of all the wireless network access points around the school, I think it would be silly to not have one for next year. So I am planning on pushing to get some funding for it at the district level. I think there are potential opportunities outside of the classroom as well, even if not all students have Internet access at home.
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