Thing #3.2

23 Things is a great way for teachers and learners to familiarize themselves with the mountain of new technology that is available for use by regular people! I have had personal blogs for years, and folks who read them regularly always marveled at the instant availability of the posts and the ease with which I told them they could be done. New technology has a way of intimidating the everyday citizen, and often, adults become more and more resistant as we spend more time on the earth. Once someone has and takes the opportunity to dive in, what they generally discover is a total lack of mystery, and they figure out that they are just as capable of being a "blogger" or "Facebooker" as their child or grandchild! My mom is a great example of just that: she has been here this summer helping out in our home and with our new son, and my siblings and I had a race to see who could coerce her onto Facebook first. My sister won, and my mom LOVES being able to keep up with friends and family that way -- she's been busy, too, as a new grandparent, and now that she's retired, she's not in the whirlwind center of public life in her hometown anymore. Technology -- she hsa a Gmail account, too! -- is helping to link her to people and activities she might have found herself removed from in her retirement.

Using blogs, especially, could be very useful for an educator with students because of the immediacy and the ability to share information. Digital learners have become conditioned to seek and share information in cyberspace, and if we leave those children behind, we will find ourselves in quite a mess. They need to know that we, too, are keeping up, if not moving beyond them , in order to continue to respect us and trust that the subject matter we are trying to share with them is up-to-date, too. I cannot imagine a history teaching simply using a textbook to teach history. "Current" events has a whole new meaning in 2009! This week's TIME magazine isn't even "current." We have people posting news stories as they are in progress.

All of these tools can be used to support my own learning simply because they are requiring me to engage. I think that is the greatest first step in learning that exists!