I've recently started to follow the #edchat and #engchat conversations and several educational websites like EDSITEment on twitter. It's amazing the amount of resources I have come across in just a few weeks. It can get almost overwhelming. It can get almost depressing.
I work at a small, rural school. I don't have ipads, and clickers, and nookcolors. I don't have mobile labs and classroom computers for students to use. I don't havea technology rich, everything-at-your-hands media center.
This past week my seventh graders were working on small group projects. It would have been amazing for them to have access to classroom computers for completing digital timelines or media rich slideshows. I read about teachers who have their students blogging, creating digital presentations, and sharing everything on a classroom website. And I get a little discouraged that my students aren't doing those things.
It is so easy to sit back and look what I don't have and use that as an excuse for not doing. This article at Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension sums it up nicely. It's EASY to make excuses for not doing.
And?
So?
Suck it up!
I may not have the dream set up, but here's what I do have - bright students who have a desire to do and learn; a social studies teacher next door who agrees that the more we work together, the better our students will learn; a principal who understands that learning doesn't always need a quiet classroom; a library-media specialist willing squeeze everything possible from her limited resources.
I also have a room full of students who have, for the last week, followed directions, worked as a peer group, read to determine the author's key points, summarized information, argued their opinions, made compromises to keep the group working, paced themselves to meet deadlines, did some self-evaluation of the project before turning it in, and left on Friday asking, "What are we doing next week?"
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