Learning from My Students

I thought the jigsaw activity that we did at the last face to face was very valuable. It was interesting to hear how my group's facilitators, Robin U and James, are using media tools and blogs to support and enhance their teaching and their students' learning and listen to them share some of their frustrations with the available tools and the management of the blogs. During the session I was having some trouble figuring out where to start with my young ones yet realizing that it is vital for students to start early so that when they get to middle school and high school they have the skills that will enable them to be more self-sufficient when using technology and media at school. I was still trying to figure out where to start with my students and how to make it enhance what I am already teaching when my students came up with the idea themselves. We were reading a book by one of our favorite authors - Robert Munsch - when one of my students asked, "I wonder how Robert Munsch gets the ideas for his stories?" I said, "I don't know. I wonder how we could find out?" Immediately several students told me to look it up on the internet. So I asked them how to do that. They said, "Google!" without a moment of hesitation. As I turned on the Smartboard, they told me to open Safari and type in "www.google.com". So of course I did what they told me to. After google was loaded they told me to type Robert Munsch in to the search box. When the search results came up they told me what to try and then they proceeded to navigate me through Robert Munsch's Official Website. I was completely amazed that so many of my students could talk me through all of the steps from the very beginning to the very end. The students were able to get the answer to their question and more importantly I got to experience first hand how powerful it was to be able to let my students lead the way to answer a question that they had through the use of technology and how easy it was.