Week 4 Reflection

I have found many of the resources we have looked at so far useful. Social bookmarking is useful as well in the education environment. I am not sure it is as useful as some of the others, but I still think there are some educational uses for it. I think administrators could use it to inform parents of the processes being used within the schools. They could bookmark the pages that involve the schools behavioral programs and student services. This would also allow parent the access to the rationale of using the research based programs. Teachers could obviously use social bookmarking as a clearing house for a student resource site (class specific).  Teachers could share with each in their own school structure for both professional and subject specific site information resource. I am not sure that this replaces other resources available. On wiki you can post site links, video, and other media all in one spot. To me, wiki does so much more than social bookmarking. There seems to be a lot of similarities between RSS and social bookmarking. I do not like having to sign up for Yahoo either, from what I have read delicious used to be much better before Yahoo got involved. I think social bookmarking has value, I am not sure that it has that all inclusive value that I am looking for.

The Trends and Issues chapter was interesting to me. I always find the way people define things in a way like a heavyweight boxer being introduced.  I find all of the definitions a way to condense the information about a field that is far more comprehensive than any of the definitions.  All of the definitions from the 1920’s until the books definition all have relevance as descriptions of the field in its respective time frames. I like the books definition, because it seems all too often those of us in the education field forget that our specialization crosses over to the business sector as well. I found the earlier definitions interesting and surprising, because of the new technologies that changed the field early on, such as lantern slides, films, and television.  I find the design statement interesting in that we are really trying to take all of the hardware, software, videos, etc. and incorporate into an environment that may be teacher led or virtual. I am not sure what is missing in their own respective ways each definition touches on the technology, teacher, student, resource, and it application.  I wish it including the shareholders more in the definition, but they are there.