Value of Education

I didn't think that research was important at first. It took a long time to find articles that related to what I was doing. Maybe that's because my field study, for example, was too restrictive, but I thought it was hard to find articles and that it didn't really inform my practice.

As the years progressed, I realized how informative it was to have others who had tried and tested what I was considering doing, in their own classrooms and they wrote what worked and what didn't work. Last semester, the articles we found were monumental in guiding the unit we created on Digital Citizenship. We found some great articles written by the ISTE that actually had the website (CyberSmart.org) that we used the most to create our unit! What a great resource that we can take and use in our classrooms.

This semester, we found articles on blogging that had sample survey questions, (pre and post), blogs to find that are kid friendly, and list of ideas for blog posts! What a great use of time--rather than re-invent the wheel! Also, this semester, I have been more vigilant in using twitter. only use it for educational purposes, and have been able to follow quite a few people who have posted great resources on their blogs.

Finding research through out this process has changed the way I teach. It has given me ideas as to which technology would be better for what I am doing in the classroom. At the beginning, I had no idea what a wiki even was and why would I use a blog in my classroom? My time in the computer lab was spent doing Success Maker and All the Right type. Now, my computer lab time is spent writing, commenting, and replying to each other in an online community. It is about collaborating on projects online. It is used for making digital projects using glogster and wordle. Finding resources on all of these technologies has changed the way that I teach!