Thing #5

I first read Web 2.0: A Guide for Teachers which discussed the variety of resources that are on the web for teachers to use. The resources include blogs, podcasts, Flickr, YouTube just to name a few. This site also gave the teacher an idea on how they could use each of these to help enhance the experience in the classroom.

I also read the Horizon Report 2008, and was stunned that the research that these guys did four years ago was accurate. The technologies they said were to mainstream in the next one to five years have in fact begun to mainstream into today’s education system. Grassroot videos have come in the form of YouTube, Collaboration Webs have emerged in the form of blogs, podcasts, and Skype. I used a form of each of these technologies in high school, and am continuing this trend in college.

After reading these articles I grasped a better understanding of School 2.0 and the direction it is leading our education system. To me, School 2.0 means that before long our school system is going to be entirely based on technology. I believe that hard copies of text will be done away with, replaced with online versions. Classrooms will become paperless, replaced with computers and online classes where assignments are completed and submitted through the web. As a future educator, I find this to be scary as I never enjoyed using technologies when I was in school. I still do not fully trust computers and have an old school paper and pencil mindset when it comes to school. However, the future of education seems to be heading into a technology based classroom with the classic version of education becoming a thing of the past. As a teacher, my reality will be a paperless class where computers are the paper, pencil, and textbook of my students.