Technology is always changing and with each advancement it is molding the world around us. I think it is never too late to learn technology or begin to utilize it for our own purposes. Yes, learning something new makes us vulnerable or nervous… but it is to what extent we can channel that vulnerability into learning that indicates how successful we can be. Gardener Campbell speaks extensively on the power of technology and the ways in which we can use it as a medium to make progress in the classroom. Both in this video,  ”No More Digital Facelifts,” and article, “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure,” Campbell reinforces the idea of an online identity, in which teachers and students become the “architects of their own space.”

Gardner states that technology make us aware because we are in constant communication, but these mediums should be used in context. These “marvels and wonders” should be making a difference in the education field. Firstly, get students excited about what they are doing online by allowing an openness – that is, let them personalize and explore the decorative possibilities as if it was a locker. Building such a cyberinfrastruture gets the students authentically narrating, curating and sharing. After all, Gardener quotes John Modd in saying, “Meaning happens when two people connect” and what a better way to connect than in an online environment that shares information across all sorts of physical boundaries.

The “digital facelift” Gardner speaks of was initially a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. But really, it doesn’t solve any problems; it merely alters the way in which that problem is viewed. Newspapers also went through a period of “digital facelifting” but it was just putting their same content on the web. All of these facelifts aside, I think the most important view we can have is one that encompasses the web as a place where we can create and provide our own communicating networks. Web 2.0, this medium for online engagement, may lead to our own “bag of gold” in the classroom and through technological advancements.

Click the links in the first paragraph to see the video and read the article!