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.