Chapter 1: The Read/Write Web

My main interest in technology in education is to understand and be a part of today's student culture. I am convinced that my 13 year old son has a different way of thinking than I do from growing up in a technological world. It's a new generation raised with technology as a primary forum for communication and learning on the internet. I found that this first chapter validated my intuition that the entire younger generation is thinking and learning in new and non-sequential styles. Our education system still attempts to teach in a linear fashion, relying on sequentially based information sharing, in order to meet the requirements of curriculum frameworks. I'm not sure this is really working form many kids.

I am a very non-linear thinker to begin with, so I have an understanding of how overestimated sequential learning is. I always called myself a backward learner but reading this chapter validated the fact that I prefer to gather information rather than to be filled with it by a teacher. I like to connect with a topic and work my way backwards. I think that this is really the way our kids are naturally learning due to their access to so much information on the internet. There are so many ways to begin exploring a topic and our current teaching practices are far behind the thinking styles of many kids in this generation. Educationally we have a lot of catching up to do.

I am also fascinated with the concept of social networking as a place that we visit; a community. It is like a virtual piazza, mall, or coffee shop. We meet and chat, laugh, share, and spend time with each other connecting socially. This is such an amazing concept and so many adults are afraid to experience it. I have had the pleasure to spend time and aspects of myself with people all over the world. People who I have at one time or another had a connection with during my life. These people are no longer distant memories, they are connecting with me in the present moment. This prospect of connection through social networking is a critical part of a culture that I feel I must understand and be a part of in order to know the technological imagination where my students are thinking and being with others. In fact it is not imaginal at all it is the reality of today. I believe that our social sense of ourselves in technology spaces is still somewhat uncivilized, particularly with kids. I believe that as a counselor who teaches interpersonal skills it is my job to teach new social skills in the world of technology and the internet. If I am not including these skills as a part of our social repertoire then I am not engaged in the current world of my students. Thus teaching these skills is missing a huge portion of my student's lives and ways of being in the world. I would consider myself negligent as a teacher and counselor to teach without including technological modes of being. This chapter, for me, truly summed up the fact that we are way behind our kids and not necessarily teaching them in ways that are meaningful to them. It's definitely time to get up to speed with our students in the public school systems.