Wow - Cool video. I liked the interview with Dr. Rhoten. "Interest driven learning" way cool. Learning not education, leaner centered not institution. What a new way to think about how and what we do with our students. Making the education include more of a personal experience that the students can relate to. What can digital media learning tools do to help facilitate education. Allowing the students to use these digital tools to get to the content of what they need to understand.
Dr. Mimi Ito helped me to understand that the socialization that happens when students use Facebook or other social resources is not as bad as we sometimes hear. Of course parents want to make sure that their children do not spend all day on line. But, we need to find that balance of helping our kids to use social resources in a way that will help to education them. Dr. Mimi explained that being "on line" is not really a waste of time. That friendship driven activities can be a positive experience. Our goal as teachers is to be more active in finding ways to include this type of media in our lessons.
Dr. Pinkard interview was really eye opening. A special place for students to be inspired to create and publish, record their own work. The technology was available and the place to be was available for these students. A special place for 9th and 10th grades, that have the opportunity to use digital media in a way that was not available when you are in the classroom. The students have the chance to become the teachers as they move through this program. Wow.. this is so different from what I have ever seen. I would love to see this type of environment in the high schools in NH. To me this type of environment creates so much trust between the students and the mentors. Sometimes I think this is why so many teachers have a hard time with allowing students to use computers or other technology in the classroom. They are slightly afraid of losing control of the class. We need to let go of this fear and allow our students to move in the direction that will them to create their own personal experience.
Dr. John Seely, "Allowing the students to be creative and using technology to help them measure their own personal progress". Amazing. Again, we have seen time and time again that students do want to learn, but that the learning needs to be on their own terms and we need to really re-think our classroom and how we are relating to our students. We can use the technology to help our students check their own progress and create their own journey so to speak.
Education world This is a great article that has ideas and suggestions for different grades of using technology.
Video This is a short video on using active boards in the classroom. Pretty cool as well. I have never used this board but really like to.
Thank you so much for posting the Education World article. I have been thinking a lot about ways to practically use technology with my first, second, and third grade students. One of the suggestions from the article was to have students create podcasts about their favorite books. I know that would work well in my classroom. I work in a multi-age room so I would love to teach the third year students who could then share their work and teach the younger students. I also really appreciated how the one school in the PBS video had older students teach the 7th and 8th grade students. I'm really starting to see how much collaboration takes place using Web 2.0 not only virtually but within the classroom community. Students would greatly enjoy the opportunity to show others what they can do on the computer. Thanks again for the article and if you discover any similar resources I'd love to see those too!
ReplyDeleteYeh, I liked the article too. I did my student teaching at a school that was K-8 graders all in one building. They had the older students be a "computer buddy" to the younger ones. It was really amazing to see first hand how middle school students could be "teachers". I had not seen this before. Many middles school are off by themselves, and do not get the chance to interact with younger peers. I don't know why we do not do more of this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your great resources! I love the idea of teaching to the younger ages. It is true, my students are 6-8 contained in their own building. It would be fun to take weekly or monthly field trips over to the elementary schools to have my students work with the younger ones about all types of topics. Digital Citizenship comes to mind, but it could be on any topics they choose. They could also be the teachers of the technology and show them how to make podcasts, etc. So much fun!
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