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Blog #3 Doors Don't Slam Open

This lesson weeks lesson was called open. networked, participatory. But in this blog I focused more on being open. Personally, I am not a very open person, my business is my business and those that I want to know I will share it with. But, when it come to having a productive classroom environment I think that you have to be open not just personally about your life and experiences but open to new ideas, open to criticism, advice and other opinions. 

When it comes to building an open learning environment and classroom I think the biggest thing that you need is having connection. Connection can come in a few different forms such as social media or face-to-face conversation but really it's all about getting to know one another and establishing a comfort around each other. You cannot build a network or learning community without being open and comfortable with sharing. When it comes to the classroom setting this would be called a 'no closed door' classroom because in a classroom you and your students should be comfortable around each other. I think that more classrooms should be open access classrooms, which just means your students are comfortable to make mistakes, open up, ask questions, accept advice, criticism and compliments and overall you as an educator needs to personalize to your learners. How do you do that? By making sure your students are comfortable enough to open up to you, then you are able to learn their strengths, weaknesses and how they may learn best. 

Hopefully, having open access classrooms begin to grow and become more popular but, with the technology we have now, the future of the education will really be able to happen anywhere/anytime because everything will be online. Almost everyone in today's society spends the majority of their time on their phone so, my thoughts are that schooling and textbooks will soon transfer over to being on our phones or tablets...as a future teacher this is a scary thought to have because school is about having real life hands on experiences. How are students supposed to get that through a handheld device? I think that incorporating technology is a great benefit to have but relaying solely on a device could lead to problems helping students become productive adults. 


When it comes to textbooks used in a classroom, I think that many schools will try to switch to online because students have access to anything online. You can learn or know anything with just one click away. But if schools are going to go that route  they need to take into consideration of if they can fund computers for each student to take home because some students do not have a computer, internet or smartphone at home to use. With that being said I am one for keeping textbooks around, I like flipping through pages and having the book right at my hands. Getting rid of textbooks would be getting rid of the hands on experience. By having both textbooks and online resources you are creating more open access classrooms, instead of having students read dry scholarly articles, teachers could assign watching a documentary on YouTube or Netflix or even assigning a blog for them to read.

Although I do not think textbooks will become obsolete I do think that writing will be. Since everything is done online (applications, payments, ect) and teachers prefer typed papers instead of hand written (mostly because student handwriting is hard to read) typing will soon take over having to hand write anything. Schools do not focus on cursive and handwriting classes anymore because no one uses it. We were told at a young at that the reason we were learning cursive was to be able to sign paper but who really actually signs their name anymore? It is just squiggly lines. Overall, textbooks will be here for the long run until schools get the funds to supply their students with travel computers but writing will soon disappear and only a few will know how to do it just like writing in cursive. 




So, when it comes to having an open access classroom there needs to be...openness, comfort, connection if you do not have that your student will struggle learning.  

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