Week 6 Reflection EDCI 5825

What is your reaction to the 10 Big Shifts in Education? Which shift(s) will be easier and harder for your to integrate in your future teaching/classroom? Please explain.

I have to admit that this chapter was rather inspiring. In my opinion, the author did a wonderful job of tying all the previous information into an excellent final chapter. The ten big shifts were: open content, many many teachers and learning 24/7, the social, collaborative construction of meaningful knowledge, teaching is conversation, not lecture, know "where" learning," readers are no longer just readers, the web as notebook, writing is no longer limited to text, mastery is the product not the test, and contribution, not completion, as the ultimate goal. I believe that the easiest shift to integrate in my future classroom would be number two. It is essential to connect to other teachers whether that be educators or experts. I can certainly see myself learning from others who are willing to share their ideas and experiences. In turn, I can see myself as a person that is willing to share and inform others of new ideas. I also believe that number four would also be easy to implement. I think that it is important for students to develop a sense of self-empowerment and self-fullfillment. In order to do so, I would love to allow my students to post blogs and projects on websites for others to view and respond to. Richardson mentions, "On their own, our students are learning that their voices matter, that people are listening and responding, and that their ideas count" (Richardson, 2010, pp. 151). In language learning classrooms, it is vital for educators to provide students with resources where they can share their knowledge and learn through the revisions and ideas of others. I hope to be able to set up some sort of collaborative exchange whether it be by allowing students in other country to view our class wiki and projects that were posted or setting them up with some sort of e-mail exchange. Both situations will allow students to post ideas and materials and allow others to expand upon those ideas and help them learn through the knowledge the other acquires. This will truly show students that their work is meaningful and will not just be throw away. It will be used to enhance other's knowledge and they will actually see the results and ideas flourishing right in front of their eyes.Using the web as a portfolio (number 7) is also essential in language learning classrooms. That way teachers can share their students work with various different audiences and students themselves can track their progress over the year. This is yet another way to go green and save paper!
I believe that all ten shifts can be easily integrated in my future classroom so it is hard to say which would be most difficult. I would have to say that if I had to choose one then I would pick number six. I believe that it is important for readers to be critical of the information that they are consuming. However, much of the reading that takes place in a language classroom is done in the student's second language which they have not quite mastered completely. I think that it is important to instill the idea of critically analyzing others writing and not believing everything you see on the web. However; these students are going to be reading in a different language and just processing the language itself may be one of the hardest tasks for them.