So much for keeping this blog up to date! Is August the only time I spend on learning the technology? My great friend and colleague, Tracy and I went to OTF's conference on Teaching in the 21st Century. It stressed the importance of technology as a means of accessing a network of people online who will mentor, challenge your thinking and allow you to follow your passions.
Will Richardson certainly challenged our thinking. Allowing our students access to the world will take a shift in thinking. It will require a vigilance on the part of teachers and parents, as well as alternative products for students who are not allowed access to the net.
Equity of access, computer tools and time to work with these is a huge issue that I think about.
Garfield Gini-Newman was another featured speaker. I am a fan of his critical thinking consortium site, and often refer to it for lesson ideas. He spoke on the first day, and it was a review and consolidation of a previous conference I attended sponsored by OTF last year: Critical Thinking.
One thing that is very clear, is that I need to continue to learn how to use the tools. For one thing, rather than create our pages in Dreamweaver, I will suggest to teachers that they learn how to create a class web page on a site like this: Blogger, WordPress, or Edublogs.
No comments:
Post a Comment