The Read/Write Web Article Assessment

Will Richardson’s article The Read/Write Web discusses how the World Wide Web started, how it has become essential in today’s culture, the effect it has had on education and the challenges it brings to new immigrants in this society. Many great facts and points he addresses are:

• Tim Bernard Lee’s grand vision for the internet and how the first part came to be in 1993.
• How quickly it evolved and how far it has come.
• “44% of adult internet users had used the internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files, and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online.”
• Schools “…have been slow to adapt to these new tools and potentials.”
• “The ability to easily publish text, pictures, and video is changing the face of journalism as we know it.”
• “Today’s schools are faced with a difficult dilemma that pits a student body that has grown up immersed in technology against a teaching faculty that is less facile with the tools of the trade.”

This rapid change in our culture has impacted our society greatly and getting schools up-to-date with this cultural change is essential both to the school and to the student. I have had the fortunate opportunity to be student teaching in a school that has made the decision to move in the direction of technology. Every student has a laptop and the majority of work is done online through a Moodle site. We incorporate Wiki’s, Podcasts, iMovies and other forms of technology to learn about subjects and synthesize information. Combining subject information with tools that they will need once they graduate is essential to their success.

The downside to this is that the students tend to know more than I do when it comes to technology. Thankfully, they have been patient with me as they show me what they know and give me the opportunity to present material in a medium they enjoy.