Course Expectations and Response to Unit 1 Readings

I am looking forward to this course for many reasons, but predominately because I feel that there is this huge push for districts to mastery literacy skills but not many districts want to find the best possible way to achieve this for students.  As an educator, I know that the use of technology can accomplish these goals better than many of the processes that administrators are wanting us to use.  I am looking foward to learning about meaningful new opportunities for my students, in the hopes that I can use them to convince fellow teachers and administrators of their success.

I think my biggest take-away from this week's readings was the story about the student time-traveler.  It is sad to think that many teachers are teaching in the same fashions  from a century ago.  The time-traveler's description of the classroom:  student's sleeping and day dreaming, and boring questioning strategies are still evident in many classrooms today.  If we do not motivate our students by teaching in ways that they can relate to we will lose them.  Technology can be applied to every skill that we teach our students, especially in the area of literacy.   The majority of information taken in by today's youth comes from the internet, it is a new literacy that we must embrace and teach with to keep our students engaged and motivated.  I found this article on Edweek and thought is was pretty fitting for my opinion on this topic.