The New Age: 21st Century English Classrooms

Nowadays, teachers, classrooms and schools are trying to utilize the new technology that is available to many schools. They do this by incorporating social networks such as Facebook and Twitter that many students already have outside of school and using blogging such as this. This is completely understandable and it works for many students and it does for me to an extent. I give teachers a lot of respect for trying hard to make lessons relatable to their students. I enjoy blogging. I didn't at first but I really have learned to get into it and use it to enhance my understanding of the current book that I'm reading. So, in this aspect I truly believe the attempts at using 21st century technology in the classroom. However, I do not use my Facebook or create a Twitter account educationally. I don't see how this would benefit me because I purely use my Facebook for social things. I keep in touch with my friends and family members from across the country. Facebook is almost something to get away from school. I like school, and I always have, but I don't think I could ever want to use Facebook educationally. So, blogging, yes. Facebook and Twitter, no. I do think the contact across the state to another school is really cool and can really be fun and enhance understanding of texts, but as far as I have seen, the school we are communicating with isn't doing the same kind of assignment as our school. I don't think they are reading Read for a Lifetime books and blogging about them. So, therefore it makes it hard to really have something to talk about most times. But, this idea has a ton of potential. It is a way to connect with people you don't know and learn more about the book than you yourself could come up with. I think by the time I get into college, colleges will be incorporating the same kind of educating techniques as the ones mentioned above. So this is great practice!! Blogging really helps your understanding of the text because it tests your creativty and makes you think more about things, and differently about things. The student across state communication introduces the oppurtunity for other students to mention or discuss something about the book that maybe you missed or didn't think about. This also happened in group discussions in our class and the idea is the same and would work the same. Reading aloud in class gets boring and long. People read at different paces and understand at different paces and reading in class as a class can mess those things up for some people. Books should be read at your own pace and own skill level. Plus, no one looks forward to just sitting in class for an hour listening to a fellow student read a paragraph of a novel, and just passing it on, and on, and on.