Thinking About Learning

Yesterday was such an awesome day with my fifth graders! Thinking, technology, collaboration, collective problem-solving, and learning were playing a symphony in our class. My students have been working on creating digital stories. After using Open Mind to plan and write, they’ll use PowerPoint to put the stories together before using Photostory to narrate and create the video. They have finished the writing and have been working on the illustrations. They had a choice of drawing their pictures in Paint, Smart Notebook, or on paper. (Yes, paper! Some of my more artistic students felt like they had better control over colored pencils than a mouse.) The 3 types of illustrations required different methods of insertion into PPT, so they had to learn some new tech skills. The pencil and paper kids used a digital camera to take pictures of their drawings. The room was quietly humming as they helped each other learn how to insert their images. After they finished, they edited and peer edited some short paragraphs they had written after researching some inventions of the late 1800s. They have begun to post them on their individual blogs and comment on each other’s posts. We are slowly beginning to utilize Web 2.0! I was so proud of the ways they were interacting with each other to learn and generate products. It was a good day in our Global Horizons classroom.

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Ever since I heard David Warlick speak at SC EdTech, my brain has been in an evolution revolution!  I’ve used technology for teaching and learning for at least 5 years, but most of that has been contained within my classroom.  I have known that because of the internet our class extended beyond the walls of our school out into the world, but I’m just beginning to understand how we can actively participate in that world through conversations and connections using Web 2.0 tools.  Even though my students are only in the 5th grade, I believe that most of them are capable of understanding the ways the world is changing.  Just the other night I received a phone call that was a survey about radio stations in the Columbia area.The man had a heavy accent, so I asked him where he was calling from, and his answer was, “Manilla in the Phillipines.”  That phone call came after I had just finished participating in the live fireside chat of the K12 Online Conference, in which educators from around the world had an hour of live conversation.  EdTech, K12 Online, phone call from the Phillipines…these events are swirling in my head and radically changing my philosophy of education.  As I am beginning to grasp the power of the tools of Web 2.0 and their impact on the world, I need to let that understanding transform what I do with my students.  I began yesterday by telling them about the online conference and about the phone call.  I’m going to teach them today about the flat world, which is their world.  I found some cool resources, including presentation slides, on David Warlick’s page.  My students need to know and understand the world around them, the world in which they will work, and I believe that they are not to young to learn these things.  I can’t wait to see how this rebirthing of my educational philosophy will filter down to them.  In spite of all the bureaucratic stresses of the educational world, it’s an exciting time to be a teacher! 

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The K12 Online Conference has begun!  What an awesome experience!  This is all so new and exciting to me… the idea that 51 people from places as far away as China, who are invested in education and see the potential of Web 2.0 in preparing our students for the future, could meet together online for an hour to chat is mind-boggling to me.  Someone made the comment that the world is small, but the room is big.  Something to ponder! I am such a “newbie” and a “wanna-be.”  My brain grasps the possibilities, but my knowledge is still so limited.  That’s the amazing thing about Web 2.0.  Now learners learn from each other, not from a “sage on the stage.”  Everything that I need to know to be a better teacher and to prepare my students for their futures is already out there on the web somewhere.  I just need to increase my expertise in the area of information literacy so that I will know how to transmit my knowledge to my students.  The possibilities are exciting and limitless!

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Since school began this year, I have maintained a blog for the parents of my students that provides a brief summary of what we do in class each day.  I never get comments, but I get lots of hits daily.  The first week of October I attended and presented at our state edtech conference.  The keynote speaker was  David Warlick, and he really turned me on to the power of Web 2.0 and its educational implications.  I reached the conclusion that I needed to begin a new separate personal blog to reflect on my own learning as an educator.  I am convinced that the educational needs of our students today are changing rapidly, and the legislative/education machinery is not keeping up!  I’m excited about the opportunities Web 2.0 offers to locate and communicate with like-minded educators.  I just discovered Women of Web 2.0, and I’m looking forward to all that I will learn through these networking opportunities!