I was in despair early this week. I came very close to "dropping" the course in the sense of no longer trying to do the activities. I would simply read what I could and skip the blog and discussions. It's too much work. I can't cut my sleep any further, and I was shortchanging my students. The wetpaint wiki site takes a very long time to do any little thing from logging on to fixing a typo. I'm not a stressed out person, but I was early this week. I was somehow able to get it done, but I'm still considering this option.
I read a number of the materials including a couple of things about RSS feeds. What the author says is true; it's very easy. I'm not sure that I see how they fit into the literature classroom, but I'm going to try to think of a way. I also looked at the Twitter for Teachers site. As Vladimir said to Estragon, "I remain in the dark." Both of these technologies encourage shallowness rather than depth. I am trying to keep an open mind, but both seem to require flitting rather that settling in and thinking.
I also read some material about wikis and visited a couple of the examples for language arts. What I saw looked like group plagiarism. I didn't look at them all, but I was not impressed as far as I went.
So here I am: energetic, experienced, not afraid of technology, having a good chemistry with almost every boy I teach, and feeling like I should retire in the face of this wave that doesn't seem all that constructive to me, though it certainly is new and different.
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