The Classroom:  Is it singular?

 

  • Pew Internet: Social Networking Web sites and Teens: An Overview, January 2007
    • 55% of teens have a social networking personal profile (MySpace, FaceBook, etc.). Over half of these teens visit their site once or more per day.
  • PEW Internet: Cyber bulling and Online Teens, June 2007
    • 32% of teenagers who use the internet have been on the receiving end of bullying type behaviors online, ranging from annoying to menacing. The most common form is making their private information public online.
    • However, the majority still feel bullying is much worse and happens more often in person than online.
  • PEW Internet: Teens and Technology - Youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation, July 2005
    • 87% of teens (defined as age 12-17) use the internet; 51% daily.
    • 84% of teens own one or more "personal media device" such as a computer, laptop, cell phone, PDA, etc. and 44% have two or more.
    • 45% of teens own cell phones and 33% text. They prefer texting/instant messaging to email.
    • 81% of online teens are gamers.
    • The largest jump in online use occurs -n seventh grade.

What does all this mean for a bunch of Digital Immigrants like us? - Marc Prensky (again!).  

  • We ALL have to start making steady and significant moves forward in order to engage our students in the learning process. Start moving to the next stage.
  • "I’m getting tired of hearing people continue to ask for the evidence that technology helps students learn. It doesn’t matter. We know — that good teachers help students learn. We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher’s hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world." David Warlick

What Is Web 2.0?

  • Explanation
  • Definition - Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I've elsewhere called "harnessing collective intelligence.")
  • Cara's Three Cs of Web 2.0 - Collaboration, Connection, and Contribution
  • RSS Feeds and Aggregators

Blogging

Podcast

  • Definition -  An audio file, and more recently enhanced or video, distributed via the internet for playback on a computer or mp3 player.  Term is a combination of iPod and broadcast!
  • Podcasting for Education

Wikis

  • Definition -  A web site that allows readers to collaboratively create its content in a small closed setting or a large open setting.
  • Wikis for Education

Google

Delicious

  • Sharing Favorites/Bookmarks - Accessible from any internet accessible computer!

Flickr & Creative Commons

Online Virtual Environments in Education

Looking at Teaching and Technology in Your School Today

Mentoring and Goal Setting

A few things to keep in mind as you learn and grow with technology:

  • Student safety with technology is an ethical as well as legal (CIPA) responsibility. Read and follow your Acceptable Use Policy. If you want to do something that's not approved, work within your school system to make changes for use.
  • Standards are the rule of the day in education today.  Fortunately, ISTE in in the middle of an exciting process called Refresh which has led to the development of updated technology education standards for K-12 called the NETS*S.  Explore how they can be applied in your classroom and participate as new standards are developed by ISTE for teachers NETS*T in 2007-2008 and administrators NETS*A  in 2008-2009.
  • You can't stop. Our children aren't stopping their use, application, and growth with technology so we can't either. If you succeed at the first step, then move on to the next.
  • We aren't helping our students prepare for their future by educating them for our past.

Can we?  Of course we can!

Watch Kathy Cassidy and her first grade class Telling the New Story.

What if we don't?  We might be featured in a Teacher Movie. 

Other resources I've stumbled across: