Blog Post #7

Wendy Drexler: The Networked Student

Wendy Drexler asked in her video, why does the networked student even need a teacher? A teacher is still a valuable asset to a students learning. A teacher is one who has the ability to guide the student through a jungle of information that can be found on the internet. The main challenge is to filter through a variety of different sources available and structure the information accordingly. The teacher has to play an important role in this process. Not only can a teacher help a student to sort through the information but also to communicate properly with others. Somebody else may have already invented the wheel before and it’s just a matter of sharing the information with others.

The advantages of being networked are that you can communicate with a great number of resources than you could in a conventional classroom, as well as the convenient of being independent at what time you receive and share the information. Your location is only an issue when you need to access and upload information from the internet. The downloaded podcasts and RSS newsfeeds can be access offline as well for example. Students expenses are very minimal regarding podcasts, for example you don’t’ have to be a student at the University of Berkley and pay tuition to gain access to certain information that professors publish online.

In my opinion, I agree with most of the information provided on this video. Children today are in a technological advanced world. The success of our students will depend on the ability of the teacher teaching the children the correct guidance of utilizing the information with the tools described in the video. The disadvantage is if a student misuses the tools if not properly educated on how to use them. There is a lot of methods on the internet that is available to students, but it takes a teacher to show students how to find, filter, structure and share the information.


A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment (or PLN)

This student uses symbaloo, which is a web site that can be accessed from any computer. She is able to store and categorize her links according to her needs. She emphasized her independence of the tools she is able to use in her science class. I on the hand continue to use my bookmarks as well as my top site functionality of my browser. I find it more convenient since I have my computer constantly with me. The disadvantage to this for me is if I don’t have my computer or I have to use another computer. I have however experimented with symbaloo and I am still trying to work out the kinks to better utilize the program.