Week #5: Forget about the Textbook

Listening to Dr. Mazur was thought provoking, and really interesting.  What caught my attention during his lecture is the discovery of how difficult it is to teach something that you are learned a long time ago, and became an expert in. I think everyone can relate to forgetting what is was like for you were in learning a specific topic (ex. multiplication), especially if you have been teaching a particular subject for years.  It is a nice reminder to take a step back and look at the topic from your student's perspective, not just yours as an educator.

I think peer teaching is a great way for students to collaborate in the classroom.  Not only does it put students in a better position to relate to each other, it helps you as an educator quickly assess your classroom and see where the students as a collaborative group understand the topic at hand.  With the use of technology, you can extend peer teaching outside the classroom with the use of a wiki or blog focused on the specific topic.

Dr. Mazur's research and results, shows us as educators that it is not the ability to memorize a "recipe" from a textbook is what we are meant to do, but our role is to facilitate strong questions that help our students think, share and thoroughly understand the concepts that we teach. If we are helping them understand the core fundamentals, based on the statistics Dr. Mazur showed, we should see improvements in test results, such as NECAPS and a continued improvement in AYP within a school.

A great reminder that as educators, our goal is to create life long learners in our students with a strong understanding of core fundamentals to make them successful.

Week #5: It's Not About the Tool

Great article!  As I read through this article,  it immediately caught my attention in clearly explaining the differences between using a blog and a wiki in the classroom, "don't use it just to say you have one or the other in your classroom, make it count."  At times, it seems like teachers get this tools set up and have them for the students, staff or parents, but it is not always used as a collaborative tool. Some use it more as a publishing tool for classroom news and homework, for this type of use I think teachers should consider using a web site to publish classroom news.

This quick article helps to provide quick and clear direction on how to both a blog and a wiki.  I am planning to share this with my staff each year, as a stepping stone to teaching them the differences between each as well as ideas to incorporate them in the classroom.  For blogging, I am looking into ClassPress.com, this is because it keeps your blog within the classroom, "no one outside your class can view or participate without your permission." 

Another resource I came across is about "How Can I Use a Wiki in the Classroom?", which I think will be helpful in guiding staff in the best ways to take advantage of free technology and pushing for the continued integration of it more regularly in the classroom.  This helped me think of small, free steps our classrooms can take to make big steps into using technology more frequently and within our district's slim budget.  

Overall, if we can agree upon the proper use of wikis, blogs and web sites within our classrooms as well as provide the rules of the road to students and staff, our students will be able to take advantage of the technology tools within the limited capabilities of our district. 

Week 4, PBS Video

In this video, there is a lot to take in around the use of digital media in the classroom and outside the classroom. I appreciate the digital based schools approaches and ways they leverage digital media to teach, however is it realistic for us as a country, this article addresses the broken structure we have to fund public education. A few things I never heard mentioned by the anyone interviewed and would like to know:

• Are these public or private schools?
• Who is purchasing the technology? Schools? Tuition? Parents?
• How are they able to afford the maintenance of software and stay up with current cutting edge technology?
• What are their staff's backgrounds? What is their required trainings to keep up with 21st Century Learning?

Based on what I saw and listening to those interviewed,  I don't think the technology is what we need to teach or structure curriculum around. It is the ability to be problem-solvers, learn how to work with others and become life-long learners, that will be open to change,  and find ways to adapt to our ever-changing technological landscape. One recent article I came across Programming project comes to primary schools, discusses establishing coding clubs for elementary students to help teach about computer programming. I agree that it is important to expose students to the technology, how its used and works, but it is not  necessarily going to be the only driver to keep students as life-long learners.

I think the biggest concern for public educators, is how can we facilitate the same problem-solving skills with limited technology, out-dated software and lack of resources. Currently, we fortunate to have paper until the end of the year, let alone supplying laptops for an entire classroom to use, even as a mobile computer lab. We can't assume that regular use of the latest technology is the answer to an improved education but making sure that our students have the desire to be life-long learners and ability to adapt to the technology as they grow.

Week 4, Social Bookmarking

Initially, when I first started reading about social bookmarking - I was a little hesitant. Anytime social, web and education are put together, it is a fine line to walk, see page 10, Educational hopes and fears of Web 2.0. I enjoy the ability personally, to consolidate all my resources into a single place with the ability to access them from any computer, tablet or mobile device. In terms of use within public education, I believe we need to provide parameters to students, staff and the community. 

For example Diigo and other open forums do not allow restrictions, such as appropriate tagging of content, it is subjective to the users.  As an administrator, I want to assure my students, staff and parents are receiving appropriate information in the appropriate context, as the attached link discusses the pros and cons of technology in the classroom. You do not want staff or students exploring beyond their bounds.  It would be beneficial for this type of forum to be customized for a district or particular school to assure proper content reviews/approval processes are completed prior to publication.  We want to be collaborative, but I also think it is important establish rules of use to ensure proper use of these resources as they are becoming increasingly more popular and an essential way for us to communicate.

Overall, the ability to bookmark and categorize your resources by subject, year, author, web site is great. I can see this being rewarding to educators as they regularly find new tools everyday and this provides the ability to share, save and reuse no matter where they are, as it typical for us to accumulate years of resources, especially now with the Internet and ease of access. 

Reaching & Teaching the Millennial Student: Teaching & Reaching the Millennial Learner: New Possibilities for the Information Age.

The sky is the limits for the students of the 21st century, only if we can introduce them to all the technology out there and teach them to use it in the classroom and real world. Technology/web 2.0 tools only make student work and collaborative learning that much more productive. People/students are able to communicate faster, retrieve data faster, work with people from all over the world, and all at the same time. Integrating technology into classroom instruction means more than teaching basic computer skills. 

Effective technology integration must happen through out the curriculum in ways that research shows strengthens the learning process  and successful integration is reached when the use of technology is routine and transparent. There is so much out there that can catch the interest of students when using technology such as scratch, animato, netvibes, skype, and wikkis. Another good thing about using technology and web 2.0 tools is that most of them are free and compatible with many of today’s media devices.

A school that is correctly implementing technology is changing the way teachers teach, offering educators effective ways to reach all types of learners and assess student understanding through multiple methods. Technology also improves the relationship between teacher and student. Technology helps make teaching and learning more meaningful and enjoyable.

Virtual Learning Communities

Virtual Learning Communities can be an incredible experience, but can also be a very negative experience. The key to having a successful virtual learning community is finding reputable communities that have properly credential members that our working together for a common goal. In these communities there need to be stakeholders that are willing to put the time and effort needed in to keeping the learning community up to date and running properly with authentic and reliable posts/information being presented.  Virtual learning communities need to have multiple members continuing to update the material and keep the dialogue going.

With today’s technology virtual learning communities can bring people from halfway across the world together and give users the ability to retrieve information that in the past would be unimaginable. We can now share pictures, videos, power points, lectures, and more at the touch of a button and for little to no costs. The learning communities and the people /professionals they bring together can only improve teacher development and the teaching of our student if done properly. The results from virtual learning committees are endless and far out way the learning of the past.

A Portal to Media Literacy

The video was very dry and I wouldn’t have survived this lecture if I had to attend. It seemed to be more geared for teaching more at the college level than k-12. There were some good concepts and points that would apply to K-12 grade level.  The piece that I thought was very strong and meaningful was about the teaching environment of today being out of date and that our student are not learning to learn or excel, but to learn what they need too for the class. Students are not learning and going to that next level of exploring and using this information. That is a big problem in education with children doing the bare minimum to pass and not fully exploring, learning, and working with the subject matter.  They are learning just enough to pass and limiting their learning by doing so. 

Young students need to be given the technology (sites and tools) and letting them explore the new technology and work with it to help improve their lives. Students love technology.  Web 2.0 tools such as google doc or flip board can help these students organize so much of their online activities, so they are not so spread out and have to open millions of windows to get all their info.  Then also using skype, blogs, and wikki to bring all students together to present class ideas and the speed and easy these tools bring to collaborative learning. Teachers themselves should be using these tools. We are currently working with our social studies and science curriculum and I am looking into setting up grade level wikkis to have the teachers use the wikki to set up the curriculum and resource to be taught, so every grade level and teacher are able to see this curriculum and develop it.