Blogs, Wiki, Podcats (ch1-3) Reflection

After reading the first three chapters of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts...etc I realized that there is a lot of technology in the world that I hadn’t even considered using in a classroom.  As I continued to read I also came to the realization that if we as future teachers don’t learn how to use this technology as students, there is no way we will have the time to learn it while we are teaching.  The author talks about being selfish before we introduce these technologies into our classrooms and I completely agree with him.  By using these new technologies in our personal lives, we will better be able to teach our students how to use them if they don’t know how they work already.  We will be teaching a generation of students who has grown up with technology that is constantly changing, forcing them to learn how to use many of these new technologies on their own.  As a teacher I want to be able to help my students with problems they may encounter when using technology, not the other way around.  I feel the new technology that is being introduced into classrooms is a good thing, not a bad one.  Teachers who may already be in the profession may not like having to learn new ways of teaching, but I think using technology will be a way to keep more students focused and make it easier to teach different concepts.  This new technology is almost a necessity in some ways because it gives the students a feel for how they will encounter things in the real world.  This section of the book focused mostly on blogs, so I will use that as an example.  As students get older and graduate they will have to be on the web all on their own trying to figure out what sources are good to use.  By using blogs, they can see what other people have said about certain sources and make a determination about how valid that source is and if they should use it or not.  Reading these few chapters has shown me that I need to use technology in my classroom, whether it is a blog, wiki, social bookmarking, or other technology that is out there.  I will use this technology in my classroom because I know if I don’t, someone else will and I will be out of a job.