Spending a huge amount of time on your computer can be detrimental to your health! I have been waking up at night with an aching wrist and numbness in my hands. Coupled to the fact that my keyboarding skills have taken a turn for the worse, I have decided to look into the situation a bit more seriously. I have also decided to invest in a good voice recognition system to see if I can “save my hands”.

The following little slideshare gives some basic advice on how to teach children proper keyboarding skills.

I have learned so much in the last few weeks, online and off.  Doing introductory workshops advocating the use of Web 2.0 tools in schools have brought with it more questions than answers as well. So I have been investigating how Web 2.0 has been working globally for teachers. And to some extend I do feel I am on the right learning path. The following quote from a wiki on e-larning and m-learning summarised what I have been trying to advocate…

“The thing about technology is you can not watch from the outside to work out how to use it—you need to embed and immerse yourself in this technology. Too often we look at a technology and make judgments without having the knowledge to make those judgments properly — because we have not taken the time to learn what the technology is about. If we look at our teenagers they are our future and the future is evolving all the times. They are the reason why we need to make time to learn these technologies.”

This touch on two “issues” that have cropped up in some of the workshop discussions. Firstly teachers have a fear of the unknown and especially new technologies. Secondly they do not have the time to engage with these technologies. Then there is the ever present third issue of connectivity. As we have found during the workshops, bandwidth is an ever present ghost, stopping us from venturing too far into new technologies that takes up more and more bandwidth. And don’t forget about the ever present school firewall that keeps out bad things, keeps learner creativity inside (or does it help them to find creative ways to get round the firewalls?), and keep innovative knowledge out? 

So for me we need to go the extra mile to embrace Web 2.0 as…

• Our kids are “out there” virtually and we need to understand the  ”worlds” they live in
• Instead of using the tools that we are familiar with, we should use the tools that they are familiar with for teaching and learning
• If the outcome of “education” is to prepare our learners for future careers, then their future will be a technology driven one. Are we preparing them for that?
• Social networking consitutes different dangers for our learners. How can we help them to protect themselves if we do not know how SN sites work ourselves?
• Web 2.0 provides platforms that facilitate social constructivist learning effortlessly
• Web 2.0 is premised on collaborative learning, while allowing individual learners space to create their own lifelong learning path
• Most Web 2.0 tools are free…