Journal 2

Breathing Fire into Web 2.0
by David Carpenter and Justin Hardman

The Hong Kong International School has an Internet presence called myDragonnet. Hardman helped create this program with students, teachers, and administrators by researching their needs and ideas. "The design of Web 2.0 reflects the belief that schools should seek to work within and exploit this power of interacting online". The new system also provides a calendar, access to documents and multimedia resources. It also provides a Classroom Management system. Teachers are able to be a click away from reaching the parent of a student, administrator, or a student’s services point person. The article was very enlightening. It sounds like the program is very successful at the school where it started. I see myself taking advantage of this program to make life easier for the students, the student’s parents, and me. I do agree that schools are living in the past. The way students communicate in this day in age schools have to change and upgrade to keep up and make learning easier and communication faster between all three parties. I enjoy the fact that I can be apart of a virtual community with my students and their parents and be part of the community that I live in. If the program is going to continue to be successful then it needs to evolve with the technology.

Do you feel that this program is valuable? Explain.
Yes I do feel this program is valuable because it is a way to communicate with the parents directly so we can work together to help the student.

Why is it important that teaching evolves with the technology?
It is important because, our students are exposed to new technology and they are learning on their own. We as teachers need to learn so to keep up with our student's learning curves.