Does anyone else ever thing about it? By “it” I mean the sheer volume of information that is available through the internet. Mishelleyb and I were talking today about the librarian coming in to her class to talk to students about using the databases they have in through the R.T. Williams Learning Center, e.g. Ebscohost, FirstSearch, etc. I don’t remember the number she and I talked about, but it was definitely in the 10’s of thousands. How, before Al Gore invented the internet, did we ever get anything accomplished? I remember when I was in college the first time, going into the library and thumbing through journals looking for information. No keywords, no Boolean searches, no nothing, except microfiche and some printed journals. Many of those had to be ordered from other libraries.
It simply boggles my mind: the ease with which we access information. I just can’t wrap my brain around it sometimes. Can you? Do you impress upon your students the amazingness of their lives? The immense amount of information the can access with just a few key strokes? If not, you should.
I am developing a class about blogs/wikis/discussion boards for other teachers and would like to know what the blogosphere has to say about it. Why do you blog? Why do you use wikis? Why do you use discussion boards? You can email me at jbowie@putnamcityschools.org, comment here, or tweet to @pchsfysicstchr as to your reasoning. I would really appreciate your input!
I was struck full in the face just how quickly we can access information about society in this day and age. I was watching American Idol (of course we DVR it so we don’t have to watch the commercials), and Adam Lambert sang an old Wild Cherry song, “Play that Funky Music White Boy”. I thought Rick James had done that song and I knew Vanilla Ice covered it at one time. I decided to google the song and found this article on wikipedia. I could not believe that the page had been updated with information about Lambert’s performance of the song before the show was even over! I was blown away!
I talk in my class about how quickly we are able to access knowledge and this is just a really fine example of how quickly our society produces knowledge. According to @mishelleyb “Not only can we be consumers of knowledge, we can be producers of it and that production can be instantaneous!” I sit writing this post, thinking that someone, somewhere MIGHT be interested in reading what I have to say and the information I have to share is available within seconds of putting it into the keyboard of the laptop. Absolutely amazing. At no other time in history have people been able to say so much so quickly. I love it! Web 2.0 is the best!
This picture totally sums up technology in the class room. When you look at the situation in a different context, it sure is funny! I found this picture on Twitpic.
Today we started editing our wiki. I inserted a poll to find out what students reaction is to the wiki. Here are the results:
This is not the overwhelming excitement I was hoping for, but at least the largest portion of them are somewhat excited. I guess students are not as excited about ICT and web2.0 as I thought they would be.
I teach Physics. My students are the best in the school. These kids really like science. They usually enjoy math. They are usually college bound. If these students aren’t excited about publishing to the web and acutally learning skills that will help them in the technology crazy world in which they will work. Insane! Help. What now? Maybe the wiki wasn’t my best bet for the first foray into this new world.
