Webinar Reflection

After participating in an interesting event known as a webinar, my only response is wow! It was quite interesting to note that the speaker was at the University of Virginia presenting us with this information and I was in Iowa, in my everyday classroom. What an event! The topic of the webinar was referring to the MySpace generation and the integration of such things into the classroom curriculum.

The implications that I believe this such technology will have on my classroom are quite hopeful. Current educators seem to be confused at just how powerful this stuff really is. After listening to Chris, he brought to the attention of the listeners that wikipedia is blocked in some districts. What?! Granted that this is not the Oxford site of reliable information, allowing students to view this information gives them a place to start when they begin researching. An interesting statistic that came from this was that 44% of young people ages 18-29 use wikipedia. Think about it - blocking wikipedia is taking away a wealth of "foundation information" for the student.

MySpace is another site that has taken off in recent years. Included in the presentation were some quotes regarding the use of MySpace and how since the district had no formal socialnetworking site, many students could not wait to get home and log on to their MySpace accounts. However, it must be noted that Mr. O'neal was not advocating for the unblocking of MySpace in schools, but rather finding a way to incorporate this into the classroom. A great quote to sum up this site is that MySpace is a "technology recess" where no one is on duty! This is why districts need to get students more involved in wikis and blogs so that they are able to ask about projects and such at school with the use of a computer.

As for integrating these things into the classroom, wikis and blogs are fantastic tools that should be used in classrooms. An example of how these would work would be that teachers would be able to communicate with others on certain meeting times or to just make sure they are all on the same page. This would be useful for students by way of putting thoughts down and collaborating about projects and research assignments.

Since it is quite obvious that students are very interested in their MySpace accounts and being able to be socailly networked, we can just hope that in the future, ways of integrating these such things into the classroom environment will enhance learning immensely!