1. “How can technology make us think about/rethink the relationships between the teacher/student/ classroom and world?”

2. What does it mean and what are its key components? - How does technology change the relationship between: the teacher and student? The student and another student? The student and the classroom? The student and the world? OR DOES IT?

3. What are our initial thoughts? - -How is the face to face interaction affected when all information is put on-line? - - The students who have difficulty organizing and accessing notebooks may also have difficulty interacting with technology - - Technology has benefits but also drawbacks – What is the balance between the two? - - Who teaches the teacher? The students? The internet? Each other? - -Does technology allow the students to take the easy way out and change their work ethic? - - Students come to the classroom with lesser/different skills than the teachers have (ie. clock reading, handwriting reading, dictionary usage) - -They expect to be able to access each other and the teacher immediately in much the same way as they access the internet immediately. - - Not all students have the same access to technology and/or come with the same skills in order to use it.

4. Emails have gone out to colleagues – awaiting feedback. Video: “The future of teaching”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6UEoguiRS8 Comment: Technology makes us rethink how we teach. Do we really need to always be in the classroom? No – We need to think outside of the box and make our teaching creative in order to further engage the students who come to our classrooms with different experiences than when we entered our classroom.

5. Print resource: “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21 st Century” (Henry Jenkins) The participation gap goes much further back than first thought of. Before technology was a part of our everyday lives the participation gap revolved around homes and children who did not have the “book” resources available to them in order to participate effectively in their learning. Those who “had access to books or classical recordings in their homes, whose parents took them to concerts or museums, or who engaged in dinner conversation developed, almost without conscious consideration, skills that helped them perform well in school. …. These new forms of cultural participation may be playing a similar role.” “Increasingly, as computer use is ever less a lifestyle option, ever more an everyday necessity, inability to use computers or find information on the web is a matter of stigma, of social exclusion; revealing not only changing social norms but also the growing centrality of computers to work, education and politics”. (Castells, 2002) Comment: We understand that technology will be a part of the classroom, but we feel strongly that we need to find a balance between the “book world” and the “technological world” that benefits those with access to the resources.

6. Time and space boundaries have completely changed with the accessibility of technology!