Will's Musings

The implications of Will's daughter discussing writing a book with her Dad, to me, means that we need to change the ELA classroom. Instead of forcing kids to read old texts, why not ask them what they want to read, let them read it, and then have them write a story in that author's style. Not only can they write the story, but you can either publish it on the Internet or actually have them made up by Apple. As THE new generation of teachers, I think we need to start spreading the word, not just to English teachers, but all teachers. The times are changing and to keep kids engaged we need to get on their technology level.

One of Will's posts on tagging, discusses the fact that people with more income and higher education "tag" more than others. To me, the income and education issue goes a little deeper with technology. One reason making standards for technology in the classroom is so difficult is because of lower income areas. Some schools just don't have the funding for the computers, and/ or the teachers that can use the technology. In these schools, students will struggle to stay focused. All they think about all day long is doing more, more, more. And using technology in the classrooms allows students to use their multi-tasking capabilities.

On Will's Wiki-watch section of his blog, he talks about one class who created business cards for their wikis. I think that is a great idea to really get students motivated to put good content on a wiki. They will want to pass out their own business cards and get all kinds of people looking at their wikis. This is a great idea for the new ELA classroom! http://weblogg-ed.com/category/wiki-watch/