Chapter of choice, 2

Based on my revelations from Chapter 1, my interest in Chapter 2 should be obvious. This past year I surveyed my students about the number of TVs and number of computers they had at home. This was the first year that all of my students had at least one computer at home. According to the book, which was written a few years ago, statistically 71% of students have access from home. Even with this access available I found it challenging to get my students to access the website set aside for them.
My teaching needs to focus on helping my students learn techniques to think, adapt and be effective learners. One of the ways I can do this is to find more ways to include the technologies they are using in a productive way in my class. I want to help my students achieve their highest potentials, currently that includes leaving my comfort zone and using the technologies they are interested in and will need familiarity with as they move into the professional world.

The chapter mentioned how students customize their desktops and chairs to be uniquely theirs when they enter a computer lab. The question is asked how to we take this customization generation and apply that customization to the classroom. Admittedly, my students do not get to change the height of their chairs. I did visualize my classroom with adaptable chairs and I think it would be better for them if they could make those adjustments. One size fits all never really fit all in any generation. When the authors ask, "How do we take advantage of students' interests and the ways they learn to create new models for learning?" I thought about a student of mine from last year. He is visually impaired, and very interested in technology. Unfortunately, not interested in doing homework. It came to me that I might get more from this student if I encourage him to submit work to me in his comfort zone. It would be fairly easy to set up a blog that I subscribe to and use the Zoho program to make his homework submissions. This would also eliminate the loss of his papers. I am looking forward to experimenting with this and looking for ways to engage to my students within their comfort zone.