Technology and NUA: A Perfect Fit

After Scott McLeod's staff presentation, the NUA CoP discussed the connections between Scott's philosophy of technology integration and the culture, language and cognition philosophy of NUA. The CoP decided that the two philosophies mesh well, and teachers working on closing the cultural and achievement gap would be served well by incorporating blogs into their courses.

Here's why . . .

1. Students are engaged because they are happy to meet teachers in a communication forum very familiar to students, thereby closing the cultural gap between students and teachers.
2. Students learn the ethics of the Internet and are able to police themselves.
3. Students of all cultures have a voice on the blog, so students are more equal.
4. Shy students have a place to express their opinions.
5. Students can express opinions that they were afraid to bring up in class.
6. Teachers are equipping students with a new literacy (language) for the 22nd Century.

The following question was asked in our CoP: "Do the relationships built online transfer to face-to-face classroom relationships?"

KC West, who just finished her Master's Thesis on blogs in the classroom, stated that the current literature on the topic does not claim that the relationships transfer to face-to-face friendships. KC's article on the new literacies is being published next month, so stay tuned for more information on this topic.