Blogging Pedagogy

Anne Davis is my new hero. Her thoughtful reflections on pedagogy

The strategies, techniques, and approaches that teachers can use to facilitate learning.

inspire me.

To be an instrument of learning is a powerful role and it is incredibly exciting to see many teachers understand that our students learn differently than even ten years ago. To integrate the free tools of the Web 2.0 into the daily classroom experience is an opportunity to engage students and create a connected community of learners that was impossible even a few short years ago. The quiet student, the shy student, the student who requires more time to process his thoughts, the student with written expression difficulties all find a new voice when they are offered Web 2.0 tools to help them demonstrate what they know.
For me, it always comes back to removing the obstacles to learning and providing new opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know.

Excuses: Would we accept these from our students?

Loved this recent post on the Bump on the Blog which referenced Jim Holland's article, When Teachers Don’t Get It: Myths, Misconceptions, and other Taradiddle. His comments echo much of what I believe and he states it quite eloquently.
As always, our aim is to model lifelong learning...and to be honest with ourselves. Would we accept these excuses from our students? So why do we accept these in ourselves? Do you find yourself saying any of these statements about integrating technology into your classrooms:
"I don't have time"
"We don't have any good software to use"
"I am not a computer person"
"My students can't behave - they don't deserve to go to the computer lab"

And he finishes with these thoughts:

So, let’s not beat around the bush and put a pretty face on what we call our schools’ technology instruction. If it’s free time in a computer lab, call it high-tech recess. If it’s prescriptive drill and kill software, call it a substitute teacher. If it’s a lack of knowledge, call it refusing to learn. If a class can’t behave well enough to earn computer lab privileges, call it classroom mismanagement. But if it’s a teacher who does whatever it takes to use whatever tool is available to give students every opportunity to learn — call that success — a teacher who gets it.

It's the summer - time to rejuvenate, time for learning and time to get it.

Comments

I'm finally taking the plunge and allowing comments on my blog. Up until now, I was reluctant because I didn't want to deal with comment spam. But Blogger builds in some protection to prevent spam. This will be an opportunity for me to see how successful this is.

So....feel free to post your comments. I love the interactive, dynamic, connected conversations that I read on other blogs. The opportunity to blog and respond to entries unites us all as a community!

A New Perspective

The subject of teens & the digital world has received a great deal of media hype recently. This blog from Wesley Fryer entitled, "Teens Online - It's OK! " is a breadth of fresh air in the midst of the discussion. Most of what is written is from the perspective of digital immigrants who have a difficult time understanding the world of our current students. (What do our students have to say?)
Not surprisingly, there is a great deal that is positive about digital connectivity that impacts all aspects of life. From my perspective, one of the most exciting things is the ability to create content for an audience (and it can be an international audience at that!) Is that possible without the Internet? Is that possible in an unconnected classroom? The ability to retrieve content immediately has been possible for a longer time, but the ability to create online content is a more recent phenomenon and has far-reaching classroom implications.
One of the points Fryer made, "Interaction + Meaning = Engagement" reminds me of one universal design for learning principle - provide multiple means of engagement. At all times, provide opportunities for connecting, sharing, researching in a meaningful context. When engagement occurs real learning results. And isn't that the business we are in - to promote learning? It's time to capture the benefits of unlimited wired access and utilize it as the engaging instructional tool that it is.
So how do we take that message to the masses of teachers?

Setting up an Education Blog

In my continuing effort to share information, especially about free tools that can help us teach to all learning styles, I would like to share another valuable link for newbies to the Read/Write Web. David Warlick posted this two page guide to help educators set up their own free blogs and it walks you through the entire process, quickly and easily.
If you are out for the summer, this could make an excellent summer project for you.
I also shared several links with a young high school English teacher who was unfamiliar with education blogs. You may want to check these out as well. (It's such an exciting time to be a teacher!)

http://adavis.pbwiki.com/ (use the sidebar links) – http://anne2.teachesme.com/ Anne Davis

http://www.weblogg-ed.com/ Will Richardson

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/ - Wesley Fryer

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/ - David Warlick

http://www.techlearning.com/blog/main/

Back to the Basics

It's time to go back to the basics, to review what it means to "consider" assistive technology for every student on an IEP as the law requires. Here is an excellent resource, and eighteen page document on the qiat.org website (Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology Services.) It includes things like:
Quality Indicators for Consideration of AT needs
Quality Indicators for Assessment of AT needs
Quality Indicators for Including AT in the IEP
Quality Indicators for AT implementation
Quality Indicators for Evaluation of the Effectiveness of AT
Quality Indicators for AT Transition
Quality Indicators for Adminstrative Support of AT services
and Quality Indicators for Professional Development and Training in AT

Something else this document includes is a listings of common errors in each area which helps teams to better understand AT consideration, provision, implementation and training. This is for anyone who is interested in any facet of effective special education.

Wikipedia

Have you discovered the world of wikis? If not, your students probably have! Wikipedia describes itself as the world's largest free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Remember those encyclopedias that we grew up with? We'd travel to the library, research our topic, find some outdated information from large, heavy encyclopedias that were arranged alphabetically and of course, use other resources as well.
With Wikipedia, information is constantly updated and reviewed for accuracy. Start exploring wikis with a topic that interests you as an introduction to this exciting research tool. For example, one instructional technology tool that has been receiving a great deal of press is the interactive whiteboard. I recently searched the Wikipedia entry on the SmartBoard and was able to effortlessly add some classroom use extensions under that category. If you would like to learn more about SmartBoards, this is a great resource.
The Internet has expanded from an environment where one accesses material to an environment for content creation. Wikis are just one example of the power of the Web 2.0! And from an accessible point of view considering Universal Design for Learning, when content is digital, it is, by definition, accessible to those who are print disabled whether due to visual impairment or reading disabilities.