Building Communities and Nations

      My personal interest in using blogs in the classroom has focused on building a strong technical community around students, but it was not until this assignment that I began to understand the truly expansive scope over which the concept has some magnitude of effect. Perhaps because my focus remained on improving individual success, I failed to see the broad spectrum of ramifications associated with integrating technology into the classroom. The following paragraphs discuss the importance of building community as it pertains to the students' achievement and the broader national community.

      It takes more than just good teachers and hard work to instruct a student; it takes a community, and technology can help us build that community. The Harvard Family Research Project recently published some findings on its website that support my argument that students perform more strongly when backed by a supportive community: Reframing Family Involvement in Education. Although the work does not specifically refer to technology's role in rebuilding family involvement, the logical leap is small and many teachers have already begun to make the leap with blog websites such as Netvibe and Edmodo that make following classroom activities easy for interested parents. In a capitalist system, time is important and parents don't always have as much free time as they would like to devote to taking an active role in their childrens' educations. Communicative technology has the capacity to assist the construction of a community for every student with the least expense of time to every individual involved. This doesn't mean that face to face communication is cut-off, but merely complimented by online discourse. The following video shows an extreme example of developing an online community, but it does prove the concept's practicality in the modern world.

Blogs, classroom websites and instant messaging are tools that can bring teachers, students and their families closer together, as opposed to driving a dehumanizing cell-phone shaped wedge between them. Furthermore, these technologies can expand the academic community to include researchers, authors and other general experts in their fields. Ultimately, communicative technologies foster a stronger supporting system from which students can pull learning strategies, knowledge and life skills.
       Interestingly, the benefits of incorporating technology into the classroom do not end with, but begin with its ability to build online communities that foster higher student achievement. As student achievement and technological skills develop, the quality and efficiency of a country's workforce also improves; thus, integrating technology into education can gradually improve a country's economic status. Supporting the argument presented here is a study performed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which tracked correlations between member countries' expenditures on ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in education and their growth in GDP (Gross Domestic Product): Are Students Ready for a Technology-Rich World? In summary, the research concluded that, in general, as expenditures for ICT increased, a country's GDP also increased. However, the increase in GDP was not proportional to the increase in expenditures and the authors suggest that the discrepancy in the relationship depends on how the technological investments in education are being used by students. It suggested that simply providing computers for web-based research did not integrate technology into a student's learning well enough for either the student or the country to see a significant improvement. So what types of learning activities that incorporate technology develop the greatest benefit for the student and ultimately the country? I believe that project based learning could be the most efficient use of technology in the classroom, but respond to this post with your comments about your own opinions on the matter.