“Real Work. Real Audience. Real Learning”

June 21, 2005 - 12:16 pm EST

I was reading my RSS feeds today, and read something interesting from [Weblogg-ed](http://www.weblogg-ed.com). First an explanation of what the site is..

This site is dedicated to discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, audiocasts and other Read/Write Web related technologies in the K-12 realm, technologies that are transforming classrooms around the world.

You can see now why I’d have an interest in this blog. Technology and education put together, one of my favorite combinations!

The [recent entry](http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2005/06/21#a3703) I was referring to above mentions the sort of work that students do in school. The sentence that best sums up the sentiment of Will Richardson in this entry…

Why shouldn’t we be teaching students that the work they create in our classrooms no longer has to end up in the dumpster at the end of the school year?

Richardson suggests that students should be creating real work, and publishing information that would be valuable to the community. One of the greatest things about the internet is that this becomes increasingly more possible. He suggests that students studying all subjects can benefit from publishing “real work” for the community, not just journalism students. This sort of thing really makes me excited to begin teaching in a year. It’s such a better idea to teach students through experience, and doing real life things. It would also benefit the community to have such a resource of information at their disposal.

Will Richardson mentions some great examples of ways this sort of journalism would work.

It’s oral histories about the community in Social Studies and experiments on local environments in science and literary interpretations in English and area museum tours in art all done by students and published in meaningful ways to audiences outside of the classroom.

I really wonder why more teachers don’t take advantage of computers and the internet the way they could. I have a feeling a lot of it has to do with not knowing how to use such a technology. A little bit of it probably has to do with fear as well. I’m reminded of my high school days, watching a teacher fiddle with a VCR and complain of being technologically inept. Teachers are required to go through professional development, and they should always be improving their knowledge of their specialization. Why aren’t teachers required to go through technology education, or even decide to educate themselves? While using the latest technologies aren’t required for a great education, it’s there! Use it!

Combine the use of new technologies (which would be enough to excite most students even a little) with the knowledge that – as a student – you are creating something that will be valuable to someone, and I think that would make for an exciting education. If not exciting, at least valuable.

Categorized: General