Teaching in the 21st Century

Image from Andrew Churches' blog  Edorigami

Today when I decided to reread articles form my delicious account about web 2.0, I found Andrew Churches' excellent post 21st century Pedagogy which sums up what web 2.0 means for pedagogy in the 21st century.

How we teach must reflect how our students learn, it must also reflect the world they will emerge into. This is a world that is rapidly changing, connected, adapting and evolving.

Teachers of any and all subjects in  today's classrooms need to take advantage of the many internet tools that allow for 21st century learning or social learning.  Most teachers are familiar with cooperative learning and probably incorporate this type of activity into their lessons.  However, new technology allows students to cooperate and collaborate with others beyond the classroom walls.  Students can now participate in real world projects with global partners.  Such projects take careful planning on the part of teachers, but like any good learning activities, the rewards for the learners can be great and there are many sites such as ePals ,to name just one, that can facilitate such activities.

In a similar vein among the emerging trends that have special significance for educators, Steve Hargadon in Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education includes the following trends:

• The world gets flatter and faster
• Social learning moves to center stage
• The age of the collaborator

Some teachers are fearful of the new technologies because of unfamiliarity and because the tools themselves  tend to mutate (usually for the better) so quickly.  However, if teachers keep in mind the aspects of 21st century teaching  outlined in Churches diagram, and choose just one collaborative tool to use to meet their teaching goals, they will have contributed a great deal to their students learning in this new era of teaching and learning.

If a tree falls in the forest...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinken/ / CC BY 2.0

I have been blogging sporadically for several years, but sometimes I feel that my posts just go into a black hole in cyberspace.  So for2010 one of my goals is to build up a network of followers to share insights with.  I strongly believe in the power of educational networking and learning through the exchange of ideas.

To meet that goal my first step was to examine the delicious bookmarks on blogging that I have collected over the last 3 years.  After reviewing those dealing with becoming a better blogger, I found two that inspired me.  The first was guidelines for writing good posts.  These are just a few of the tips from Vicki Davis's Ten habits of bloggers that win! that I plan to try to follow:

1.  Get a catchy title.  (I always enjoyed writing titles for essays.  This one should be fun!)

2.  Be brief.  (Not a problem.  I like writing and rewriting to find the best and briefest way to get my message across.)

3.  Add an appropriate graphic.  (I plan to use Flickr photos with appropriate Creative Commons permissions or MS pictures).

4.  Use multiple, relevant tags. (This is tricky.  It's hard to narrow down to the gist of the topic sometimes.)

From Richard Byrne's My Seven Edublogging Secrets I chose these suggestions for finding followers:

5.  Identify a niche audience.  (This is also difficult.  I teach a grad school course online for teachers who want to integrate technology into their k12 classrooms.  I would love to connect with other professors who teach a similar course, but it's hard to do.  The edubloggers I follow usually are k12 teachers or tech instructors in k12 settings.  I learn a great deal from them, but I have no idea how to find others who do what I do. 

6.  Post consistently.  (I read a lot of edublogs and "edutweeters" everyday.  I just have to remember to both comment of their blogs and post about thoughts their entries spark in my mind.)  I'll try for every Friday!

7.  Contribute to Twitter.  (I really must remember to tweet about some of the great blog posts I read so that more people can learn from them too.)

Whether or not these suggestions work for me to extend my "following", they are definitely good suggestions for any edublogger.

Networked Learning for Teachers

Stay Connected

The recognition of the importance of computer technology for teachers has grown steadily in the last few years.  The  Technology standards for language teachers from TESOL (Teachers of English as a Second Language) are a prime example. Actually these goals and standards could easily apply to teacher in all fields  See if you agree.  The goals  are to have teachers:

• Acquire and maintain foundational knowledge and skills in technology for professional purposes.
• Integrate pedagogical knowledge and skills with technology to enhance (language) teaching and learning.
• Apply technology in record-keeping, feedback and assessment.
• Use technology to improve communication, collaboration and efficiency.

How can teachers educate themselves to meet these goals? Social (educational) networking is one of the most convenient and up-to-date ways.  I remember the days when acquiring new knowledge meant  finding the right articles or books from which to glean information.  This usually entailed a trip to the university library to checkout books or feed the copier all your quarters to copy article from journals.

Today learning can mean finding relevant information from reliable online sources, reflecting on it, sharing the new, personal insights gained, receiving feedback and comment from interested parties and then responding to this feedback with new insights. Steven Downes discusses the importance this type of self-directed learning in his video,  Web 2.0 and Your Own Learning and Development.

Finding reliable sources can be accomplished by starting and nurturing a good personal learning network (PLN).  Personally I find that my own PLN is always in state of flux.  I continually add and delete rss feeds to edublogs in my Google reader, follow and "unfollow" people on Twitter, and check my Yahoo and Ning groups.  I don't stop following others because any of their ideas  are irrelevant, but because there is no way to keep up with all the good learning and sharing opportunities today.

I am in the process of deciding which sources in my PLN I want to keep.  It's really a tough decision, but if I want to reflect on what I read, I need to have a manageable set of items.  I hope that this "weeding out" of my PLN will allow me more time to digest and comment on what others say  and to share my own ideas with them.

So You Think You Can Teach with Tech Tools!

Since 2004 I have been teaching a course through the State University of NY at Buffalo presently called Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts in L2.  The purpose of the course is to familiarize pre-service and in-service teachers with various free, online tools that they can use to enhance the teaching/learning experience.  I could feel the excitement of the students as they blogged about how they could use these tools in their own classrooms, but then I began to worry that in their enthusiasm they might lose sight of their instructional goals.  

Judi Harris and Mark Hofer wrote in Grounded Tech Integration in the ISTE magazine Learning and Leading with Technology,  "Most technology integration strategies begin with and focus on the technologies' affordances and constraints - what they can help us do and their limitations.  Unfortunately, this approach does not ensure that educational technologies will be well integrated into instruction that is keyed to specific content-based learning goals".

However, I have decided that the tools I teach about and the teaching goals the students need to keep in mind are like the partners in a dance.  The tools that we as educators have literally at our  fingertips today are recent  developments. Before we can decide  how to use them to meet instructional goals, it is necessary to become familiar with what each tool  can and cannot do.   So I visualize teaching with tech tools  as a continual, partnered dance between new tech tools and teaching goals.  At some points in the dance one of the partners shines more brightly, but at other times the other takes center stage.  However, both dancers are essential to creating a great performance!

Personal Knowledge Management

By Harold Jarache

   

   The videos for Learn Trends 2009: Convergence in the Workplace Learning (Nov. 17-19) provide an excellent source of information on social learning.  Although this free, online conference focused on social learning in the corporate world, many insights apply equally to the university setting. 

   A recurring comment by presenters was how difficult it is today to stay up-to-date. George Siemens observed that today's abundance of information means we have to change how we operate.  "Continual change requires rapid learning and innovations for individuals and organizations." 

Harold Jarache shared the  personal knowledge management (PKM) system he uses to handle today's  overload of information.  This 5-minute presentation gives a quick overview and links to posts on the topic.  He showed the relationship between the recursive, internal elements of sorting (gathering information), categorizing (tagging and filing), making explicit ( writing) and retrieving (looking up info when needed) with the external elements of connecting, exchanging and contributing. 

   In addition to the process he outlined, several individual ideas he mentioned resonated with me.  One was the importance of adding notes, tags and categories to your blog and Delicious account.  Another was backing up your Delicious account.  (I'll have to figure out how to do that one). Perhaps for me the most salient idea was hearing that he blogs every Friday.  That's a practice worth emulating for those of us who need some structure in our lives.  I often glean ideas from others' posts but don't take the time to pull together a week's worth of ideas.  I  think I've been missing the critical-thinking  or explicit part of managing knowledge and I plan to correct that!

Upcoming Online Educational Technology Conferences

Connectivism is alive and flourishing through many free, online conferences in November and December.  The K12 Online Conference involves educators from around the world who are interested in innovative ways to incorporate web 2.0 tools into their teaching.  It runs or two weeks (Dec. 7-11 and Dec. 14-17). Archived live events from 2008 let you  a feel for topics addressed by participants.
 On November 13 Educause, Vice President,  Richard Katz will present a webinar entitled The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing.

Nov. 17-19 Learn Trends 2009: The Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations Conference takes place in cyberspace.  The focus of this conference is learning in the workplace.

Two new online conferences are debuting this year.  The Virtual Roundtable Conference on language learning with technology Nov. 12 and 13 and the Campus Technology Virtual Conference on December 3.

If you are thinking about attending some of these events, be sure to check out which specific topics are interested in and see the time that they are offered.  You may have to use a World Clock Converter to be sure that you arrive in cyberspace on time for the event.  Some of the conferences also require prior registration, so don't wait until the last minute!

Ideas for Using Photos

This week the students in my online class at the State University of New York at Buffalo are working with photos and the multiple things you can do with them through Flickr applications.  In Big Huge Labs you can use photos from Flickr or your hard drive to create mosaics like the one to your left.  You can also create posters, name tags and many other objects.

In a previous mod some of the students explored Animoto, a site where you can create cool slide shows with music.  Down below is one I just created of my son's early years in Mexico.  Loved those pinatas!