Ahh technology. What an amazing thing.
Today I had a lot of homework to catch up on and it was just not feasible for me to come to class today. So what did I do? I caught up on my readings all morning, checked out the wiki for my 336 class, did the assignments (started an igoogle page/google reader page) and joined twitter! I also watched some of the video on You Tube that my fellow students were watching. I was able to tweet my responses, connect with others, meanwhile, watch the same thing they were watching! It was really quite amazing to feel like I was participating in a classroom even though I wasn't physically there.
I do understand this doesn't work every time, and sometimes there are just certain things you need a real person there to help you with, but today, I think it worked. Especially with the added twitter aspect to it (I was able to keep up with class comments).
I was also able to continue on with my other homework and then check back to my twitter account to see what was going on. For me, that is key to keeping me engaged. I like to multi-task and get bored easily, especially, if it something I have already herd or know about. Therefore, being able to flip through different tasks helped me get more things done in a small amount of time.
Yay technology!
I think you make a great point! While technology certainly has great benefit for "us as the student," what about the challenges it will pose for "us as the teacher" when we are trying to convince kids that it is actually worthwhile to come to class?
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