Journal #2

The article by Justin Hardman and David Carpenter, “Breathing Fire into Web 2.0” discussed how schools like the Hong Kong International School are making strides to incorporate the technology their students are familiar into the classroom. At the Hong Kong International School a program called myDragonNet was created that takes advantages of the capabilities of Web 2.0. It not only serves as an organizational tool for classroom management for teachers it is also an active means of communication between the students, teachers, and parents outside of the classroom. MyDragonNet in my opinion seemed to be incorporate many of the aspects of WebCt along with TaskStream because it allows students to keep an online portfolio of their work and also addresses the standards and benchmarks they are incorporating.

Can a program like myDragonNet be incorporated into the elementary school classroom?
I think at the elementary school level a program like myDragonNet would be more useful to the teacher as an organizational tool and means of communication with parents, because especially in the primary grades students cannot be held responsible for submitting assignments online and such but it would be nice if all of the parents had an account and the teacher could use it as a form of communication with parents instead of sending home flyers.

What are possible disadvantages of a program like myDragonNet?
There are two major disadvantages to myDragonNet, one not all students have equal access to a computer. Not only may some students not have access to a computer at home but at many school students are still limited to their access of computers. Another disadvantage was if teachers begin to rely too much on technology it might take away from their responsibility as a teacher to teach their students.