Week 3 Reading Reflection

1. There are a variety of ways to share student work with the larger community. One example that November brings up that I had never considered before is using the fax machine. Students could fax similar work to peers in other schools, or fax questions or research to museums and other experts (November, 2001, p. 26). This connects the classroom to real-world situations and problems. As far as the best way to showcase student work, I believe that teacher (and school) webpages or wikis are excellent tools for that. Wikis teach students about “community collaboration, respect for other people’s ideas, intellectual property and public domain, and much more” (Richardson, 2006, p. 67). They allow parents access to their child’s work right from home. They also give students a chance to contribute to the wider pool of knowledge on the web. They are applying their learning in useful, practical, and immediately visible ways. November believes that publishing student work in a public forum has a particularly empowering affect on “at-risk” students because they are being given the opportunity to use their talents and skills to positively influence their communities (p. 34).

2. With globalization, much of the world is at our fingertips and we are connected as never before. When I studied abroad in England two years ago, I was able to keep in touch with friends and family by video chatting (for free!) with a program called Skype. Similar technology could be used in the classroom to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue and allow students to interact with people that they normally wouldn’t, especially young people from other countries. November provides some examples of how to do this. One good tool to use would be video conferencing. November (2001) describes an amusing encounter in which a young man’s preconceived ideas and stereotypes are challenged when he video conferences with a young woman from Puerto Rico (p. 30). Using this technology (or similar technology such as Skype) allows students to explore the diverse world around them without ever leaving the classroom. Finally, even something as simple as e-mail can be used to gain firsthand access to peers who could challenge the narrowness of their views and help them think critically about controversial issues (p. 33). Cultural sensitivity can only occur if students are afforded the opportunity to have constructive dialogue with people who have very different beliefs and cultural backgrounds from them. With globalization and the Internet, this is becoming more and more accessible.

3. Other teachers are often invaluable resources for help. As an example, there are numerous websites online that provide forums to teachers to discuss curriculum and lesson planning. The internet even connects teachers who live on opposite ends of the globe; November gives the example of a British teacher who got expert advice about haiku from a Japanese teacher (p. 42). These kind of collaborative relationships have rich potential to deepen student understanding because at the same time they deepen teacher understanding. It gives teachers access to information (and perhaps most importantly, feedback) that they wouldn’t necessarily find in a book or even on a webpage. One excellent web resource for teacher collaboration is a forum called The Teacher's Corner. Teachers can also empower students in creative ways, such as using other educators as resources to evaluate student work. This brings in an “outside” opinion and takes pressure off of the students (p. 41). Teacher collegiality, therefore, is important if we want to foster student collegiality.