Networked Classroom

    I love the idea of having a networked classroom, and if I was in the regular classroom, I would be working towards this.  Since I am not in the regular classroom, I see my role as a librarian to help these teachers utilize these resources  and help them to create their own networked classroom.  Just in the last two weeks in fact, I shared some ideas with one of my second grade teachers. I made the suggestion of starting a classroom blog.  So her and I both did some research and found kidblog.org which allows students to safely post to a blog.  It requires you to have a username/password to access it which she has given to parents.  Even though she only has three computers in her classroom, they use this as a literacy center and they post to their blogs.  Parents and other students are able to comment on posted blogs.  For second grade, I am very impressed with what these students are doing and learning. I talked with her after she started the blog and asked how it was going.  She said the best thing about it is my kids want to write!  Which for some of the students was a huge struggle.  She said the worst thing about it is she has kids asking her all day if they can go onto the blog because they have something they want to share.  I think that's a great problem to have! 

     

    Chapter 3 in the Personal Learning Networks classroom was very insightful.  There are so many advantages to having a networked classroom.  I liked when the author used the term transparent.  No longer are students just confined to their classrooms, they are able to connect with students and teachers from all over the world.  Collaboration is another huge benefit to a networked classroom.  This gives students and opportunity to work with others and collaborate on new project  and ideas.  You can work with students from another part of the country, and be able to gain different perspectives.  One thing I have noticed when teaching is that a student's world can be very small - especially in a rural community where there is not much money.  Many students haven't ever traveled, and to some of them it's hard to understand there is life beyond their community.  Having a networked classroom would be greatly beneficial to them. 

The biggest disadvantage I see to having a networked classroom, is the technology gap between some teachers and students.  The thing I fear the most is for those 28 kids in Mrs. __________ 5th grade class that are not able to do these things because she doesn't know enough about technology.  While the kids in the other two 5th grade classes are doing amazing things with technology.