Are we really “engaging” students?

Over the years we have all considered that the use of “current technology” in our classrooms has helped to make our learning environments more interesting and relevant to students. Engaging is the current buzz-word to describe this phenomenon.

Schools have always explored the adaptation of current technologies to engage students in the curriculum. Slide projectors, 16mm film projectors, tape recorders, TV sets and video players – in their time – have all been pressed into action in classrooms across the country to help bring the curriculum to life for young minds.

But in 2008, are students still excited to sit in front of a 16mm film projector – other than for the novelty value? What technology is relevant for students in 2008?

More importantly, how do students interact with the technologies of their era?

Is the Read/Write Web in your Classroom?

Have you used Facebook? YouTube? Flickr? Wikipedia? Have you read or created a Blog?

If you have, then you are part of the Read/Write Web. Of course, the Web has always been Read/Write, it just wasn’t too easy to Write!

Lots of new tools are making it easy to extend your Web experience beyond consuming information to publishing information.

All our kids are doing this – but they are doing it at home, not at school.

When will our education leaders catch on to the new web tools?

While the web becomes more accessible by the day, our school administrators are becoming less and less willing to embrace the new tools that have turned the web into a Read/Write medium for everybody.