Reflection # 1

After creating a blog and being exposed to another form of reflecting my thoughts and beliefs in my rough draft of my educational philosophy, I believe that blogging is a great way of expressing my thoughts and ideas. This assignment has shown me how I can incorporate another form of technology in my classroom by guiding the students and showing them another way of writing through something they are already familiar with. Today we are in the day and age of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks. So we as educators should know that there could be a lot of positive outcomes by the use of blogging and be aware of the negative aspects that could be exposed to our students if we do not closely watch and guide them.

In the articles of both November’s and Steven Downe’s, there were many points given that made you really think. November targeted how the use of the Internet can be tricky, especially for younger students that are not use to the exposure of technology. November then went ahead to say that many students fall into the “well if it’s on the Internet then its true information”. Reading that, definitely had my eyes open because many children fall into that trap, especially if told to research materials on a subject and are not given the guidance or resources. The teacher should be aware and guide the students by providing them with resources, links, scholarly articles, and many other materials to assure that they are getting accurate information. That will also reassure the students on how to find legitimate information on their own if told to do so for an assignment. With wanting to bring more technology into the classroom, November also mentioned that as an educator, we need to really understand the dark side of the Internet in order to prevent bad ways of blogging if brought into the classroom. However, it does go hand in hand with the rules and procedures that will be given by the teacher to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Although blogging can be short, it is informal and it gives us the freedom to write our personal thoughts, concerns, and ideas. Which also gives us the opportunity to publish our writing for the world and most importantly our target audience to see. Steven Downe’s stated in his article that blogging helps us learn from the critique of others from the comments they provide and in actuality helps a student develop a new skill set of writing that is used later on in the students’ college education. I agree with Steven’s article on many levels because it does help develop all sorts of critical thinking skills, writing skills and information literacy among other things. And as a teacher I will definitely use blogging as a technology tool to allow the students to reflect on what they are writing and thinking. Which will also open the door to organize class discussions, posts, updates, announcements, provide summaries of readings, and form small groups for assignments/projects that will be in my curriculum.