catebeck's posterous

Like Alice, many educators, policy makers and even the general public respond resoundingly with "That's impossible!" when challenged to adopt a new paradigm of education for the 21st century.  Most people today adhere to a paradigm of education that is strictly 19th century.  But, like the Queen, a growing number of educators are believing in and accomplishing "the impossible". 

 

Scott McLeod, in his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant,  recently reminded us of a line from Mission Impossible, and we must apply that challenge to all of society.  "Your assignment, should you choose to accept it" is to take education truly into the 21st century.  It is not enough to say that we are already living there.  Technically it is the 21st century, but our schools are not there, and our challenge now is to reinvent schools for the 21st century - for the sake of our children, our students and the welfare of our world.  Making such a paradigm shift is not easy.  After all, when any of us thinks of education, we usually think of what we knew as school - the way it has always been.  That is how parents, policy makers, politicians and many students think of school.  But we have to make the paradigm shift to 21st century education.

 

So what is 21st century education?  It is bold.  It breaks the mold.  It is flexible, creative, challenging, and complex.  It addresses a rapidly changing world filled with fantastic new problems as well as exciting new possibilities.  Fortunately, there is a growing body of research supporting an increasing number of 21st century schools.  We have living proof, inspiring examples to follow, in schools across the United States.  These schools vary, but are united in the fundamentals of 21st century education - see Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education and Multiple Literacies for the 21st Century.  Scott McLeod has issued the challenge of creating a plan to get us from "here" to "there".

 

The term "Web 2.0" is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,^[1] and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumer) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumer) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social-networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.

The term is closely associated with Tim O'Reilly because of the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.^[2][3] Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but rather to cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. Whether Web 2.0 is qualitatively different from prior web technologies has been challenged by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who called the term a "piece of jargon"^[4] — precisely because he intended the Web in his vision as "a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write". He called it the 'Read/Write Web'.^[5]

It has been awhile since I have taken a look at how Web 2.0 is defined. In true Web 2.0 fashion, the definition has changed.

Online Interactive Learning Tools
Engaging Students in Online Learning

Interactive websites are designed to enhance online learning opportunities and engage students in authentic learning processes.

They are designed to interact with the user through a text-based or graphical user interface. 

There are now 1000's available, but below are some that are well known for their standards based curricular activities.

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Aligned to NETS-T: 1.a, 1.b, 1.c, 1.d, 2.a, 2.b, 2.c
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Illuminations

Illuminations is designed to:

-Provide Standards-based resources that improve the teaching and learning of mathematics for all students.

-Provide materials that illuminate the vision for school mathematics set forth in Principles and Standards for School Mathematics.

Illuminations is part of the prestigious Verizon Thinkfinity program.

There is a library of 103 online activities that help to make math come alive in the classroom or at home. There are lesson plans and links to exemplary websites chosen by an editorial panel. 

Link to tutorial click here. 

Google Earth

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others. Just added is historical imagery from around the globe, ocean floor and surface data from marine experts, simplified touring with audio and voice recording. Please download Google Earth to carry out the activities and complete the assignment.

For a tutorial on Google Earth, click here.

For advanced tutorials on Google Earth, click here.

For additional video resources, click here

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS:  Google Earth takes up a lot of bandwidth, which may mean a tremendously slow "trip" for users with slow connections or dial-up issues. 

Additional Resources

A number of interactive sites listed by subject have been compiled on a Wiki by Melissa White.
The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
Don't miss the Online Telescope site!

21things Hands-On Activity and Assignment:

1. Visit the Illuminations site or choose a site from the Wiki (there are a number of curricular and grade level interactive sites) and go through one of the interactive activities. Go to your portfolio and write a short description of the activity and how you would use this activity in a lesson. Include the URL to the site you are using.

2. Go to Google Earth. Type your address in the "Fly to" area and locate your house. Take a screen shot and paste it into your portfolio.

3. Take one of the Sightseeing tours in Google Earth. Locate the tours under "Places" and click the + sign next to Sightseeing. Then select one tour to go on.  Write a short description of the tour for your portfolio.

Interesting sites.

Wallwisher in the Classroom

Posted by friedafoxworth in Educational Technology, Web 2.0, instruction

Wallwisher is a free tool that allows you to create online bulletin boards.  Teachers must create an account to create walls, but students do not have to have a wallwisher account or an email address to post sticky notes to the wall.  There are so many ways to use Wallwisher!  I used Jing to create a simple tutorial on getting started with Wallwisher.

After you have created your wall, there are 3 ways you can share it.  You can get an RSS feed so you can follow it, get an embed code so you can display it in a blog or webpage, or you can share it by selecting from a long list of online tools (Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Diigo, etc.)

You can use Wallwisher in a classroom with just one computer.  Just have the wall link open and allow students to take turns posting comments during independent reading or writing workshop.  Here are some ideas for using Wallwisher with your students:

Language Arts
Use with an Author Study: students post stickies about their favorite book by the author.
Figurative Language: after reading a text, students post stickies containing examples of figurative language from the text. You could have separate walls for various types of figurative language and students could write their own similes, metaphors, etc.
Character Traits: students post evidence from the story to verify a story character’s traits.
Brainstorm writing topics: students post ideas they would like to use for writing. It would be a great resource for students with writer’s block!
Great Leads: post a writing topic and have students write various introductory sentences for it.
Word Choice: post several “bland” words and have students list synonyms that would be more interesting or descriptive.
Book Talks: students make recommendations about good books to read.

Social Studies
Cause and Effect: Why did certain events happen? What were the results of the events? (economic crises, wars, rise and fall of governments, impact of new technologies, etc)
Important Historical Figures/Point of View: students imagine they are the historical person and write comments that could have been made by that person.
Timeline: post sticky notes listing specific events and arrange the notes in sequential order
Compare and Contrast: post comments about how 2 events were similar or different

Science
Make Predictions: before an experiment, “What do you think will happen?”
Experiment Observations: “What actually happened?”
Landforms: students create a “sticky note” glossary of landform vocabulary with links to websites about each.
Habitats: post comments comparing how habitatsare similar and different.

Other Random Ideas
Resource Page for Students: post links to online resources and activites related to a unit of study.
Collaborative Planning: small groups could post sticky notes to plan a project.
Quick Formative Assessment
Parent Feedback
Affinity Diagram: collect student ideas on any topic (What makes a good student? How can we improve learning in our class?)

Wallwisher is a great way for students to collaborate and express learning.  More ideas are available in Tom Barrett’s Google Doc presentation, “Seventeen Interesting Ways to Use Wallwisher in the Classroom.”

Nice collection of ideas for WallWisher