"Gardening?"

Classrooms, gardens, and Franklin come to mind. As Ben Franklin proclaims in his Autobiography, "...And like him who, having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, which would exceed his reach and his strength, but works on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplished the first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue..."(94). The Teacher As Network Administrator article forced me to contemplate the aforementioned Franklin quotation. Am I creating an "...open and malleable set of connections..." for my students to explore their voices and the voices within the world? Am I teaching "info scarcity?" I know that Brian Hatak started using RSS feeds several years ago after the summer technology class in the ESC building. By using RSS feeds, information will, like David Warlick states, "find me." I need to take the time to learn of Hatak's successes and challenges in order to implement this option for my students.

Hopefully, my exploration regarding using googldocs and photostory3 for collaborative assignments and projects can help begin to construct an improved Learning Network for my students. In my freshman classes, many students are using googledocs to design rubrics and projects in order to establish personal relevance while synthesizing information regarding short stories. I know many other teachers have experienced great success with these programs, and I hope that my students will too. Gaffney and Smith helped me with the introduction of Photostory3; I think it will be interesting for those students that choose to use this option.

It may not be apparent, but I am trying to think about my students, "Info Portals", "Voice Responsibility", the assigned articles, my colleagues' success with technology and other practices. I am impressed by all that are attempting, challenging, succeeding and believing in learning continually.