Reflection #2

This week the readings were about telecommunication. I don't think I had ever considered tools like skype to have a place in the elementary classroom. I always thought it was more for those in business or friends that want to keep up across distances.

One of the articles talked about a classroom of American students interviewing HIV positive students in Africa. That is incredibly powerful. "Students were moved from apathy into empathy as they began to form an emotional connection to the people on the other side of the world." Empathy is not something that can be taught to students, it's something that comes from an emotional bond and understanding the situation on a personal level. Knowledge is power and knowledge can move to action. These students will remember the rest of their lives what HIV can do to people.

Tags are something I'm very familiar with, I use facebook, youtube as well as tumblr to organize and tag things as well as search with tags. I think tagging is a very web 2.0 idea. People don't search for things that the "internet" labels, but, rather things that other people label or things they have labeled themselves. It's not passive, it's active.