Today’s class left me thinking. If there was a limit to storage space on the world wide web, what would the criteria be?
There is a lot of useless junk on the internet. We all have to learn techniques to sort through the trash. It could be considered critical dumpster diving! With this being said there are also lots of sparkling treasures waiting to be found and lots that we do find and share.
We, meaning everyone in LIBE 477, have valuable information to share with the world, so we are moving on in with our online presence! It is empowering to know that I can take up space on the web with ideas and projects that I am passionate about and find other teachers who are not in my school, or maybe not even living in my country to share them with. The idea of giving back to the vast online community excites me. We know its better to give than receive, but usually online I am a taker. I take information, take ideas, and take free web 2.0 resources! By creating a website I am able to give back.
I really had to step back while working on my project and ask myself, who are my participants? I was trying to meet everyone’s needs at once. My website was going to be directed towards teachers, and students. Is it too much to expect to make it useful for both groups? I have a vision and want to strive to meet the needs of teachers and students involved in environmental education. I wanted to have resources available for teachers who want to use technology to help students learn about the environment. I also want teachers to be able to connect with other teachers to share ideas about different projects. I also want it to provide a place where students can share their ebooks relating to an environmental theme, and a place where they can read other students ebooks to gain knowledge and awareness about different regions in Canada or other countries.
I explored a website called buddypress because it would make collaboration a little easier. I am not fond of the design, and would prefer to use weebly, which I have spent a fair bit of time over the last couple of days exploring. Somehow the site also needs to be private and well managed so only invited students are able to share their work, and their ebooks meet a basic criteria. I also want the URL site to have blog where anyone can post a comment or share an idea, which is then approved before being visible.
I love the idea of critical dumpster diving. What a novel way of thinking about the mix of content on the internet. It is wonderful to see the quality of teacher thought that is being posted for this course. I have never seen anything like it. In designing for online participation in education, there are always multiple possible participants to think about. If you are making a site for student learning, you might still want to share this with other teachers to share ideas and develop instructional designs. If your site is designed to foster teacher networks about a specific topic or issue, you still might include information about teaching and learning with students and ICT as a way to illuminate or illustrate the conversation. I have never been so aware of the need for teachers to organize from the ground up and make their presence known online. These blogs are a start, for sure.
What a great opening question! It is interesting to think about what kinds of information we as a society would keep and what we would discard. It can certainly become overwhelming due to the vastness of information but also exciting when we find a gem. What is your plan to get your site known for to other educators? How will they all begin to know that your site is a gem? Do you think that it is appropriate to promote our own websites as teachers or do they hold more value if they gain a life of their own and are distributed based on how popular it becomes on it’s own? What avenues do we have to promote our own sites or blogs? Would you consider your site unsuccessful if no one ends up following it? Or does the process of creating it and using the resources yourself make it worthwhile? Sometimes I think there is some value in just having a space for myself that I know that no one is really looking at too closely because it allows me the space to think, create, and explore without too much scrutiny.