Bit By Bit

Reflection on John Pearce’s
“It’s Elementary Kids, Working Web 2.0 With Grade 3-4″

I really enjoyed John Pearce’s description of his journey into Web 2.0. It is especially timely for me, as I’ve spent the week assessing lessons taught this year in the lab, and reexamining tools that we use. The tools themselves are constantly evolving. New ones are popping up everyday. Some get dropped. No tool out there is perfect and part of our journey right now is waiting for things to be improved or even created. Many issues still need to be addressed— from connectivity to safety. It was affirming to hear Pearce’s own struggles in implementation and realize that this is a common experience. I think of a quote from Pappert that I read recently talking about the fact that computers are still in an unfinished state; in other words, we’re using less than “finished” products because we are still in the early stages of digital evolution. Even in the rapid development of these amazing Web 2.0 tools, we’ve really just begun.

Pearce talks about the new year being a good time to evaluate “what’s been done”. I find myself starting this examination mid-year as well. As I am getting more of a handle on the new position, I find I am more able to “surface” and gain perspective essential to evaluation.

This presentation is also timely as Cheryl Oakes and I begin working with parents on Internet Safety and helping them become more knowledgeable about Web 2.0 tools. There are plusses and negatives with each tool used, and I think our job as educators is to make these clear to parents.

I really liked the idea of “Terry the Tennis Ball” where students add on to the story and would love to incorporate that in the computer lab.

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