Raised right, Living left

In reading Chapters 1 and 2 Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, I was struck by how well the concepts covered fit into what I’m doing in my classroom right now.  The first two weeks of school in my 10th grade Lit./Comp. class has focused on “What is History?,” the reliability of sources, authentic research, and the connection between reading and writing.  In fact, I’m sure that my students are already tired of hearing me say “I want you to read like writers and write like readers.”  Richardson’s statement about “the gripping first-person accounts coupled with digital photos and video” that flooded the internet after the tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Richardson 2006) made me consider that blogs and digital sources are now our primary documents.  This could be a major breakthrough for my students.  In our classroom conversations about the importance of primary source material and the need for multiple perspectives to assess truth, my students asked how they could access primary sources quickly.  I didn’t have an answer for them.  Imagine there surprise when I bust into class tomorrow with this information. 

As Richardson(2006) states, my students are “Digital Natives,” and I am most certainly a “Digital Immigrant.”  I do feel ill-at-ease knowing that this puts me at a sizeable disadvantage when I plan lessons that involve technology.  Some technological advance that I view as mind-blowing, more often than not, is viewed as fairly commonplace by my students, and I know that I will never catch up with the digital prowress that my students possess.  I’ll always be playing catch up, but I think that this offers a very unique opportunity for me and for my students.  I can learn so much from them about the “how” of the cyberworld while helping them to navigate the “why.”  I share Richardson’s concern that what most adolescents do on blogging sites, like MySpace and Facebook, is purely social in nature (2006).  By integrating reading and reader response to blogging, a new platform for learning is introduced through this application.  Another important element that really excited me was the integration of research into blogging.  I have struggled for years with how to integrate research skills without the tedium of the “Choose your favorite author” Research Paper.  I understand that students need to know how to write a research paper, but I think that they are better served by learning the importance of content, organization, audience, and purpose in general and then learning how to skillfully integrate research for support of their ideas and arguments.