Great post

Essential Tools for the Connected Teacher: Part 3

• "Every teacher is an expert. Twitter allows everyone to share what they know."
• Info about twitter, nings, skype, and google wave that include videos and details
  

To become a better reader, you have to read . . .

Interesting and though-provoking ideas taken from Warlick's 2cents worth blog: Can Literacy be Taught?
"Students who become fluent in reading, do so because they read, not because they were taught the basic reading skills. Of course, it wouldn’t have happened without having been taught the basic reading skills. But they become fluent because they are required to read for the rest of their formal education and beyond.

If we expect students to become fluent in the broader and equally critical information and technology skills of being literate in a networked, digital, and abundant (contemporary) information environment, then they should be required to use those skills in all of their formal education, just like reading. Reading, for education, is a learning literacy. Reading, processing, and expressing knowledge in a networked, digital, and abundant information landscape are equally important learning skills — learning literacies. "

Thoughts

Reading this blog post http://jenuinetech.com/blog/?p=1232 reminds me of that one afternoon when teachers questioned the educational value of blogging. My first thought (after I got over the "I can't believe you said that" feeling) was that I need to find more ways to convince them or show them the educational value of blogging. Maybe that is not what I need to do. Maybe I need to just make things available, share examples, and find other ways to encourage the use of technology without focusing on one tool specifically. I guess part of the problem is that I am still having some difficulty with that statement because I have seen the benefits for students both in person and from observing others. It is not the "tool" of a blog that makes its educational value. It is the way a teacher uses that tool that can be educational or not. That is true of any tool, whether technology-related or not. There are non-educational ways to use books, calculators, pencils, and notebooks too.