Thing #17

Disclaimer: I did not know delicious would be highlighted in Thing 17 when I choose to explore it in Thing 16!

 The first thing I did was visit Digg and Stumble Upon and watch/read the tutorials.  The Digg tutorial was a nice way to learn how to post stories you wish to share; however, I do think you need to have a specific topic in mind when you visit the site or an inordinate amount of free time to "just browse."  I wasted 45min I was supposed to be working on this blog just clicking and reading stories posted on the Digg link that was provided.  I think it could hurt rather then help productivity if you do not have a purpose in mind when you visit (I had no idea when I got up this morning I wanted to see the Daily Lives of Sumo Wrestlers in Photos!).  I did like that you can use stacks to collect various info on a topic for students to have in a single location to view or for a teacher to review before presenting a lesson.
Next, I set up my Delicious account, choose an article, wrote my comments and tags, and added delicious to by toolbar.  When I searched education technology I found an excelled article from the UK on why coding should be taught to kids in school.  I also found a nice blog from a Canadian Professor who is a University Chair in Philosophy of Technology.  It had a huge amount of info including his course syllabus with all of the required reading as well as interviews and  videos.  This blog is an excellent example of how university level resources and info can be accessed for free through these sharing sites.  However, I always seem to have this gnawing fear that some of this technology is aiding the incessant need to "browse" and adding to already explosive levels of "surface knowledge," not just with students, but Americans in general.  I have discovered this semester a number of technology tools that I plan to use, but in the back of my mind I'm always asking: will this particular technology increase depth of understanding or contribute to even more shallow awareness.  Social bookmarking is good if you use it to access important information/ideas away from your home computer or find resources others have been kind enough to make public, but if you do not have something specific in mind or structure it in a way (such as stacking) that students can directly access what you want them to view then these sites can quickly turn into something like facebook creeping--- a way to waste a ton of time while telling yourself you are connecting.  

“Those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand.”

CS Lewis

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