Thing #5

Wow, I am loving my Google Reader! As soon as this course started, I previewed what we were going to be learning about. Immediately upon opening my Gmail account I started subscribing to feeds for my Reader. I am in love!!! There is no possible way that I could have imagined enjoying this so much, at first I looked at it with the opinion, "oh great, more spam mail." But, on the contrary.............

For now I'll keep my commenting to the feeds that I have more recently added. A favorite that I subscribed to is the feed 2 cents. In that feed I received an article called 21st Century School Continued. This article was amazing in how David Warlick expresses his ideas on what our 21st Century Schools should be looking like. He refers to the need for a teacher to not be a 'teacher' but to become a 'learning consultant'. This is amazing in concept, scary, yet amazing. In the article Mr. Warlick goes on to quote John Beck in his comparison of a teacher to a 'level boss' that our new gamer generation may view us as. Beck 'suggested that a boss (or teacher) who acts like a boss may not appear so much to be a leader to a video game generation of workers (or learners). He or she may, instead, look more like a barrier. He suggested that the boss (or teacher) might get further by acting like a strategy guide, the book that video gamers buy that publishes strategies and cheats for navigating the game.' This thought really made me have an "aha" moment. WOW!! When I sit and listen to the conversations of my students, they focus on what game is hot at the time, what codes they can use to beat levels etc. What a concept, to approach our teaching in this same way.........