The Big Shifts

Will Richardson lists Many, Many Teachers, and 24/7 Learning as his second Big Shift coming to the read/write classroom. This is a shift that I have already experienced during the past 2 years in how I have been participating in and receiving instruction in the classes that I have been taking. Most all of the classes have been online which provides 24/7 access and many teachers besides the one who is leading the class. The interactions and sharing are much more complex than often provided in a structured fact to face setting. All I have to do to delve further into a topic is to continue on with the opportunities provided on the web by experts, authors, and available research. This access has made learning exciting again and has led to many changes in my classroom teaching. This current class has strongly reminded me how important it is to provide these same learning opportunities to my students and to teach them to take advantage of all of the “teachers” that are available to them. The new read/write tools of technology help make this possible and I need to educate my students in their possibilities. At the same time, my students need to learn that everyone is a teacher and the interactive web offers them that opportunity. This shift has already started to occur in my classroom, but from this class I now have the knowledge of many more available tools to help make it happen.