Posts tagged ‘Tips’
21st Century Teaching and Learning, Part 1
Ruth Reynard discusses emergent skill sets for teachers, looking at different ways to engage digital native students and make teaching more effective:
“while we do not know enough about long-term affects on thinking and perception, we can make sure of the technical capabilities and work hard to develop in ourselves the instructional skills we need to meet students where they are in terms of expectations and familiarity. We can also become more critical ourselves in how we perceive our own disciplines and more mobile in how we distribute content and intentional in how we stimulate student response. While mobile technology is coming at us via communication demands, we can monopolize these technological advances and think through how we can use them for instructional benefit and effectiveness.”
Author: Ruth Reynard, T.H.E. Journal, 27th April 2008
Full article available here.
7 Ways Teachers Can Use Online Tools to Keep Students Interested
A 22 year old gives advice to teachers and parents on teens and young adults. Interesting post on how teachers can use onlines resources effectively to engage this generation with learning:
“Can schools keep up with their net-generation, text-savvy students? A lecture and a white board pale in comparison to online videos, cell phone games, interactive virtual worlds and 3-d animation. Already, schools have been incorporating more high-tech technology such as smart boards and projectors in the classroom. My old high school uses ipods to test and record listening comprehension. This is great–and really expensive.
I plan on writing a few blog posts on this topic, but I first wanted to review a few free resources teachers (and parents) can use in the classroom or for homework to keep kids interested in learning. Most of all, by employing new technology you will be speaking in this generation’s language, appeal to what already interests them and therefore make school really relevant to their lives.”
Author: Vanessa Ven Petten, vanessavanpetten.com, 16th March 2008
Full article available here.
Also great interview with Vanessa available from OpenEducation.net here.
Safety and Social Networking
How can we maximize the learning power of participatory Web sites while ensuring students are protected and behave responsibly?
The various scandals around social networking abuses have garnered lots of press in the past couple of years. Predators, bullying, slander, and harassment of all kinds on sites such as MySpace and Facebook are increasingly the subjects of horror stories and play into a renewed wave of fear about the dangers online.
As a professor of educational technology and media in a teacher education program, I have encountered some frightening tales myself.
Rob was a bright, well-mannered young intern whose career almost ended in controversy in fall 2006. He entered his practicum in top form with strong classroom management skills and a brilliant grasp of the high school math curriculum. Rob was well-liked by his students—perhaps a little too much by some. Three of Rob’s female students created a fake MySpace account of the young teacher, populating the site with digital photos they found through Web searches and with information from Rob’s authentic MySpace profile. Students took these acts further, digitally altering photos to produce images of the young teacher “pounding back shooters” at a local nightclub with several high school students by his side.
Author: Alec Couros, Technology & Learning, 15th February 2008
Full article available here.
Dr. Alec Couros is a professor of Educational Technology and Media in the Faculty of Education, University of Regina, Canada.
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