Having said that, you all must have guessed how much  tech-richness my curriculum provides: none. Or would helping students out through Skype make up for some of that richness? Or maybe using www.yappr.com for viewing videos in the classroom would? Well, when compared to the wealth of choices we have out there, that would correspond to a nano part of what I could be using to engage my students into more creative, independent, pleasurable learning. Oh, my, bring back that respirator!

How do my students learn? They learn by doing... by interacting, by communicating, by sharing... By the way, this is the buzz word, isn't it? "Sharing"...  At first I was reluctant to accept what Carla and Gabriela were saying about Web2.0... But then, reflecting upon it, I could find a middle ground between my humanistic view and theirs (yours)... Yes, WEB2.0 is the 2nd phase of architecture of the World Wide Web; its improved form. At the same time, it is our innate drive to learn and develop that allowed us to take the stage... "The audience is taking the stage"... as the video said. We yearn to connect, to touch people's lives. That's how we teach and that's how our students learn: they connect! My life–time guru, Adrian Underhill, once told me that the more I gave my students, the less they would get it themselves. That's exactly what WEB2.0 has allowed: information is accessible and we have declared its ownership... as we all own it, we can get it; and so we shall! That's how people learn! They go after the things they need, they share their dreams and (once again quoting one of the videos) once you share dreams and ideas, they begin their road to reality! It's a crazy wonderful world of knowledge; democratic knowledge!

As for the second and third questions, you should have asked "How much tech-richness did your curriculum provide?" and How were you using the WWW to teach your students?" Einstein had his "Annus Mirabilis"... I've just had my "Week Mirabilis"! So many discoveries! I thought I knew about the internet and about computers... there's so much more that what I'd been doing!!!! The simplicity of a blog absolutely astonishes me! So many ways to use it with my students! Still I'm just beginning. I had already used our Flex blogs at CTJ, but I was just scratching the surface. This week I've already started building a second blog for my intermediate groups to interact and to share their compositions, their ideas, the songs we sometimes don't have time to do in class, the films we talk about... The so called "contact hours" can now be extended infinitely. My students won't have only those four fifty-minute weekly sessions in class. We can have much more! And that's how I think we can transform our 21st century classrooms into learning engines. By engaging our students in the world they visit every day... how many hours a day did that video say they spend on-line?  We cannot underestimate the power of social networking, the appeal of collaboration at a personal level.

What are my main barriers to incorporating technology into my classroom? My own skills... I must feel more secure, less intimidated by the sheer power of this tool. Of course there is the financial side of it. Although the video mentions a democratic personal do-it-yourself media, and knowledge that is available at a low price, we need the hardware and the software... Just this week I had problems because could only access Edmondo using Internet Explorer 7 – which I didn't have. A few hundred dollars later, here I am! Ready! But this is workable…  The fear is a lot more difficult to overcome, humans embrace development but we are resistant to change!

Anyway, I read two sentences that made me think a lot about what we've been doing. They were:

"Ideas are being put together – we are building a bird's nest"

and

"We think, therefore we are"

I'll close this week with those... Let the next week come!

          After embarking on our Web 2.0 Safari and watching the YouTube videos, it struck me how these new tools and the horizons they open are reshaping  and redefining our roles as teachers.  Before, teachers were recipients and transmitters of knowledge.  We then became facilitators of learning. Now we seem to be morphing into instigators and mediators of learning.  The learning process has been shifting from being the responsibility of the teachers to being that of the learners themselves, and this is apparent in what we see going on in the world of Web 2.0.  It has long been held that the best way to truly learn something is to try to teach it to someone else, and this is what is going on now on the digitalized world. Knowledge is shared and shaped by everyone in a community, benefiting all. Our role as teachers now seems to be to make sure that our students have the access to this world where they will shape their learning to fit their interests and needs.

          This by no means implies that we have lost our place in the learning process.  As I see it, our responsibility has increased, for as we instruct our students in the various programs available to them and make them responsible for their learning, we need to be selective and teach our students to be.  We need to be critical as to what is presented to us and teach our students to be.  We need to be open to new ideas, ways, solutions and teach our students to be. This seems to be a much more challenging endeavor than to share knowledge acquired.  The skills we need to prioritize are of a higher complexity level then reading, writing, speaking, listening. More than ever we are not merely instructors, but yes, educators.

         What we present to our students will instigate their curiosity and their learning, but we still need to be around to mediate the process, giving  a hand when it is necessary, correcting, redirecting, stimulating, questioning, and clarifying.  There is no guarantee that what is learned is what needs to be learned, so our presence as mediators will always be fundamental.  

          The possibilities are mindboggling.