Content+Building

Mining for the conversation: "digging for the stuff" Tools: BLOG Twitter Search Social Bookmarks --Delicious; Diigo Microblog Social Media -- FlickR; Teacher Tube, You Tube Capturing the Conversation -- What is RSS
 * HOW TO BUILD CONTENT

Purpose is to create a conversation. Belief that we can change the world.** We are taking the steps to make changes, sometimes they feel like baby steps, but we are taking steps forward. Teachers at times are worried about changing. They don't like it when they don't know what the end result will look like. However, they need to put themselves out there as well as as administrators. We all need to try. That is what we ask kids to do everyday is to try something new and different, try to improve. Why can't we ask that of our colleagues and ourselves? At times it also comes down to a struggle between content/curriculum versus knowledge and understanding. We're not saying that content knowledge isn't valuable, it is. Having content knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient, to be successful in the 21st century. The power of the technology is to transform teaching and learning as we know it. To make it more student-centered, more individualized (yet also more community-based), more relevant, more meaningful. It allows each student to connect to each other, to the world, to knowledge, to learning, in the way(s) that works best for that student. We think the skills and abilities and habits of mind that ubiquitous access to technology would help us develop in our students are ones that are really hard to measure. How do you measure creativity? Or the ability to collaborate with others, both in the same room or across the planet (or beyond)? Or the ability to take in information from an almost inexhaustible supply, synthesize it, remix it, and then produce something that is of value to others? How do you measure imagination? How do you measure the ability to function in a flat, globally interconnected, technology-enabled, rapidly changing world? How do we measure the ability to learn how to learn? To know how to adapt, to reinvent yourself over and over again to meet the needs of a world that is changing at an exponential pace? How do you measure the ability to function in a world where all of human factual knowledge will be available practically instantaneously?


 * __Questions to ask yourself and each other as it relates to 21st Century Teaching and Learning []__**
 * 1) Where are you in terms of 21st Century teaching and learning?
 * 2) Is the 21st Century a fundamentally different place for learning?
 * 3) Do you have a vision for where you want to be as an educator? for your department? for your school?
 * 4) Where do you hope for your school to be in 5 years? 10 years?
 * 5) What support do you need to achieve/teach these 21st Century skills?
 * 6) What does it mean to be literate in the 21st Century?
 * 7) What should “school” look like in a world where almost all factual information is literally a click away?
 * 8) How do we teach our students to be safe, responsible and ethical users of the Internet and other information resources?
 * 9) In a rapidly changing world, how do we balance content versus skills?
 * 10) How are you utilizing the technology to help your students learn and grow? Do you blog personally or professionally? What do you know about social bookmarking? Podcasting? Wikis? RSS Feeds? Do you use an RSS Aggregator?
 * 11) What kind of technology training and staff development does your school/district provide? Is it useful?
 * 12) What kind of "personal professional development" are you participating in using the resources on the web? Who's in your learning network?
 * 13) Have you heard of connectivism?
 * 14) Are you discussing the implications of //The World is Flat//, //A Whole New Mind//, and //Did You Know?// and what they mean for your students, your teaching, your school?
 * 15) Are you ever going to be 18 again? Are your students ever going to be your age? Should we be preparing our students for the world as it was like when we were young or for the world as it’s going to be when they are our age?

[|BOOKS THAT INFLUENCE]

Students Setting the Expectations for the Classroom



[|"This is not Education as Usual"]