I got a perky email from Emily, a colleague who just finished the NVWP summer institute and felt jazzed about a presentation on tech-infused 21st century teaching by Teacher/Consultant Eric Hoeffler.
I felt the same way last year when I heard Eric, and wrote then about my plans to use a wiki in my classroom (Starting from Scratch July 23, 2006) It turned into a student-curated website, which was fantastic but let me off the hook in terms of learning new tricks.
I may be tech challenged but I know some people who aren’t. Members of the Teacher Leader’s Network have been sharing ideas lately about how to hang ten on the 2.0 wave. Since dissemination is today’s highest form of flattery, I hereby present stuff culled from a current thread. I don’t think these accomplished and dynamic educators mind my sharing, especially if you check out their work and leave comments. I have lightly edited their comments (presented below in italics).
Emily Vickery of Montgomery, Alabama suggests viewing this clip called “Have You Been Paying Attention?” that poses a question in the description tagthat I’ve got to admit has been nagging me regarding my own practice: “Since most of today’s students can appropriately be labeled as “Digital Learners”, why do so many teachers refuse to enter the digital age with their teaching practices? “
Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, a big wave pioneer in 21st century stuff, graciously shares resources from a recent workshop she did in NY: Look at agendas and resources. and here from an online course for science and math profs- lots of clips and such...
Sheryl also provides information on how to use a feed reader to aggregate blogs and wikis you want to read, along with some of her course material. She says: Watch this RSS made simple very short clip... and, Here is some info I put together for folks in a recent course I taught on RSS. Hope it helps. Just scroll a little on the page until you get to section called: RSS: Finding, Reading, Editing
Bill Ferriter, a superteacher with a blog called “The Tempered Radical,” writes: RSS Feed readers are incredible---I don’t know how I ever lived without mine, to tell the truth!... I started teaching my kids about feed readers last year and created an entry on our classroom blog designed to teach them about how they work. It includes a few screencasts and a PDF document that can be used for info...
Ellen Berg provides a down-to-earth explanation of what RSS is and how to subscribe...
Ellen Holmes from Maine sends along a really good search for 21st Century Lessons. It is a collaboration between GEM and NEA...maybe some others too. Ellen continues, Another good one is the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website. It is not necessarily good at the lesson planning level, but it is full of good resources for change agents.
And here’s a blog about using writing in the teaching of math, recommended by TLNer Susie, off an interesting site called Future of Math.
John Norton, prolific curator of TLN, pulls ideas together. He writes: Emily mentioned the digital photography site at Spain Park HS in Birmingham. Students post a photo, describe the what and why, and other students and the teacher comment.
Applicable to visual arts in other areas. Performing arts -- hmmm -- embedded video? One problem many schools have is getting server space and/or accessing space outside the district firewall. There are likely many things going on INSIDE firewalls that we can’t see, due to strict policies about posting student images, etc. The photography teacher at Spain Park is still experimenting, but one idea he had was to find other high schools with photog. programs and have students at the schools each start a school blog and have students at one school post their work for students at the other school to comment upon. This could be pretty powerful if it gets off the ground. It might actually work better in a social networking space like NING, where there are a variety of networking options. Here’s a webpage created by a middle grades tech teacher where students express their creativity with programs like PhotoShop and Dreamweaver... some funny stuff... might spark some ideas! Obviously still plenty of room...to blaze some trails! I think we’re just beginning to see the emergence of truly web-based projects and products. I would expect that we’ll see more and more products appearing on TeacherTube, for example.
John Norton adds:
Good general resource
One of the “inventors” of the scribe method...
Basics of blogging - from conference Sheryl helped organize
Third grade teacher...
Research article: Critical Thinking Through Online Discussions
Also check this out....