Post #1 - Task #1

Well, a lot of this is overwhelming...there's so much out there, and every page of the last article had links to about fifteen other interesting pages, and each of those had links to many more. To be honest, I wasn't sure where to stop! I love the collaboration concept, and the idea of students being empowered to be responsible for their own learning. The description of the middle school with all the activities happening simultaneously was very cool, but mind-boggling for me at the same time. I love all the person-to-person group work we do in class, and I get a bit afraid of everyone hiding behind their own screens talking that way, but I know there is a good balance somewhere, and just watching my own 10 year old son, who has already created his own blog, I definitely know that there needs to be integration of those interests and those skills. I've played with Wikis and blogs a bit, but not extensively. I would love to do more where the kids are commenting on each others' work. I've seen examples of that with other teachers' wikis, and I like that idea. I would also like to use collaboration for kids to work together to create tools of assessment and review. I would love to do this with grammar. I also think I would like to link the collaboration piece with podcasting about what happens in our class on a weekly/biweekly basis.