Blog Review #4

Blog Review #4

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

            I came across this interesting blog which is definitely aimed at fellow educators. David Warlick is a self described 35 year educator based out of North Carolina. He has been a classroom teacher, district administrator, and staff consultant with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. He is an author, a speaker, and a consultant. He is a big advocate for blogging in the classroom and is influential regarding education and uses of technology in that area.

I decided to review his blog called “2cents” which consists of his thoughts, ideas, and commentary on education, but not exclusively limited to education. There are some posts unrelated to education but they make up a small portion of posts.  I appreciated reading through his blog, and see the beneficial nature of learning from quality educators like David regarding their thought processes and passions pertaining to education and technology.

The site itself is very well designed and easy to navigate. He also added something interesting to his blog through the website idiogo.com. A synopsis of what Odiogo does is, “transform a blog post into a high quality (near human) audio file ready to play and download anywhere, anytime, and on any device.” This is a great idea which I have yet to see on any blog, but is one I would use in the future. It makes your website instantly accessible to those who would benefit from an audio file. As an interesting tangent Odiogo also provides an iphone app which reads your personal news to you.

There are so many posts on his blog but one that caught my interest was his most commented upon on the idea of students versus learners. David writes about the possibility of teachers moving away from seeing their “charges as students, rather than thinking of them as learners.” David presents himself as a “master learner”, someone who is resourceful while constantly engaging with new ideas. He created an interesting chart comparing students and learners to emphasize the difference in the way we think about education. Students tend to compete with each other; learners collaborate. Students obediently follow instructions like employees; learners are invested in the process. Students are compelled to work; learners are curious. Students are assessed by measuring what they have learned; learners are measured by what they can do with what they have learned.

Many of David’s posts will cause you to stop and think about the way in which traditional education can be transformed into something new.  It might also stop you from thinking that technology in and of itself is the key to educating students of this generation. In another post David warns against a heavy focus on the actual technological device or mechanism (ex. Social media), and instead teaches that we should focus on what happens through the technology.

I think that this kind of modelled reflective practice is the type of mental disposition that will allow teachers to be on the leading edge of change. Teachers should be leading in both using and teaching technology effectively. If teachers choose not to change they risk kicking and screaming the whole way down the road, ineffectively clinging to the past to the detriment of their students.