Week 6, Thing 13

Del.icio.us is a fabulous way to keep track of bookmarks and to sort them out. That in itself makes it helpful to researchers who are doing lots of browsing to gather information but aren't ready to focus on just a couple of sites. I really like that you can access this from any computer. That will make it very useful for kiddos who use a different computer in the lab, in the library and even in the classroom. I had an account this spring and forgot about it. I've started up another one and added the buttons to my page. I will use it as I find things I want to save. I enjoyed the video we watched. I'd like to learn how to make those little vidoes to have at school.

I also read Chapter 1. What struck me the most was the mismatch between how and what we teach in school and what skills our students will need as adults. Our system was based on the factory model of creating carbon copy students who all master a specific content. The book The Cheater by Michael Lazer is starting out to be pretty interesting. The main guy organizing the cheating gives an interesting description of why they think cheating is justified. He claims that the system is set up to sort out the ones who can and the ones who can't and nothing more. He knows he's not one of the ones who can excel so he doesn't want to put the effort into doing the work just to pass. He's rather use his energy elsewhere. They use some web 2.0 tools for their cheating, so in fact, they're futhering their eduction - just not what the system has been designed to do. I'm not very far into the book, but so far I like it. Lots to think about.