THE STORY OF A TWITTER CHAT: REINVENTING WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY

Yesterday, I joineed #satchatwc on Twitter moderated by acclaimed blogger Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher, who is also the author of Reinventing Writing: The 9 Tools That Are Changing Writing, Teaching, and Learning Forever.  This is a must-read book by all English teachers who want to learn more about the key shifts in writing instruction necessary to move their students forward in today’s world utilizing digital tools. Personally, I can say that it helped me a lot to update the way I teach writing. Her slideshare and her blog post about her book will give you a better picture why it must be on your bookshelf. In the video below you can listen to Vicki giving tips on how to reinvent writing.

As you can imagine, yesterday’s #satchatwc was based on Reinventing Writing. Vicki kindly started by helping the new participants how to join the chat. Here is her video to join and follow a twitter chat with any hashtag showing you how to use the free Hootsuite and free Twubs services.

She then posted 6 questions for the participants:

Finally, the discussion started. Wow, I was amazed by the enthusiasm of the teachers, the quality and the rapid flow of the discussion. I don’t believe that I have learned so many things in such a short time. All teachers agreed on the fact that writing electronically is an essential part of the 21st century education, adding that students’ motivation for writing has increased with the integration of tech tools. Moreover, technology makes collaborative writing much easier.

Students need to understand how to hyperlink, create infographics, select graphics, curate video as part of writing. A well rounded writer is experienced with many tools and selects the best one for the creative task at hand. One teacher recommended using ThingLink.com  as it allows students to use pics and annotation, as well as links and video.

Moreover, students need a community of writers and an audience as they make a huge difference in engagement & excitement. Digital brochures, posters, Prezis, multimedia help kids reach their audience. Many teachers agreed that students are more engaged and motivated when they are writing for an authentic audience.

Some teachers suggested asking students for ideas to write about as it is also important & empowering for them, adding that that the more authentic the task is, the more engaged the students are. They said it is important to teach writing for life that extends far beyond graduation as a reflective & life practice! They focused on the concept of teaching students to share their voice rather than teaching writing. In that respect, blogging and other social media tools and platforms introduce a whole new level of relevance to kids’ writing to build passion, purpose, and fun. Tweeting is also good writing practice as it forces the habit of concise expression and connects students to the world.

Nearly all teachers agreed that writing doesn’t have to be the old 5 paragraph essay all the time because students should understand different styles of writing for different purposes. They should be exposed to mentor texts and real world writing that is not essay writing! The more students are interacting, talking & storytelling, the richer their written words will be! Consequently, writing should be a daily habit enabling them to be creative and express their thoughts.

Many teachers said that writing should be integrated across content areas each day, emphasizing the benefits of urging students to produce more curricular pieces of personal interest in ELA classes. They agreed on providing high quality literacy instruction with reading and writing happening daily in the classroom as reading & writing across the curriculum is a powerful way to improve literacy across the curriculum. Therefore, it is a must to design a curriculum where writing is integrated, not taught in the isolation of the ELA block.

While discussing creative writing, a teacher suggested a wonderful website, Write About, a website offering visual writing ideas for students at all ages and different interests  to spark their curiosity and imagination. I will definitely use it with my students together with Noisli which plays ambient sounds to create a mood for creative writing.

Twitter chats are great for learning, exchanging and sharing ideas. After all, as Steven Anderson says:

 

HOW DO WE INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY IN MY SCHOOL? PART 2- STUDENTS AS EFFECTIVE DIGITAL CITIZENS IN A GLOBALLY CONNECTED WORLD…

In our teach-infused world today, educating our students about being responsible and ethical online will not only keep them safe but also allow them to enjoy and utilize all the opportunities available online. Digital citizenship helps them learn to use technology responsibly and safely. Students need to understand their rights as content creators and respect the rights of others. They need to be aware of the privacy issues, the risks of online interaction, as well as their rights, roles, and responsibilities in a digital world.

To empower our students as responsible digital citizens functioning effectively, ethically, and safely in the digital world, we decided to design a K-12 digital citizenship curriculum for our school and integrate digital citizenship resources into our program.  You can see all the resources we have checked so far in the slides below. With the help of the digital citizenship curriculum, we want our students to answer the questions such as who they want to be online, which ethical rules guide their interactions and the content they create.

One of the reasons why we blog with our students almost at all levels is to enable them to practice digital citizenship rather than learning about it from external sources. Here, you can see the digital citizenship page of my class blog. While reading all the posts on the blogging guidelines and the digital citizenship pages, my students posted their opinion on the important concepts they had learnt and their questions on TodaysMeet. They then started doing the comic strips project they had been assigned. The aim of this project was to see how much they understood from what they had read. You can see the comic strips my ESL students created on the home page of our blog. Later in the year, they are going to make their own videos on plagiarism , watch this TED talk by Juan Enriquez, have a class discussion, and write a blog post about it.  This talk is a great way to teach  students about the significance of their digital footprint.

As their digital citizenship project, we asked our grade 10 students to prepare a digital poster on a tool like Glogster or a presentation on tools like Prezi or Buncee or a flyer on a tool like Smore for middle school students. Grade 9 students played the the Digizen game after watching the movie Let’s Fight it Together and wrote a blog post about the movie. They also created their own digizen to express their online values and wishes. Digizen also has good resources you can use with your younger students to teach social networking.

We chose a game-based approach to teach digital citizenship to our primary and middle school students. Common Sense Media, Carnegie Cyber AcademyPlanet Nutshell, Media Smarts, and ThinkUKnow have great games for students at different age groups. Wild Web Woods is an online internet safety game for young learners by the Council of Europe available in 27 languages. After playing the games in these websites, students wrote game reviews and created their own digital safety rules using the information they learned.

How do you teach digital citizenship at your school? I look forward to your feedback.

 

HOW DO WE INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY IN MY SCHOOL? PART I – IN MY SCHOOL TECHNOLOGY IS THE TOOL, NOT THE FOCUS

After my blog posts on technology, several colleagues asked me how we integrate technology into our curriculum at my school. In this post, I will try to give some examples. I curated lists and information about different Web tools language teachers can use in their classes on Scoopit. There are hundreds of Web tools that teachers can use here but it doesn’t mean that they have to use all of them. I always remind my colleagues to consider the following questions before they try any of them in class:

1-    Is it going to contribute to improve the language skills of my students?

2-    Is it going to contribute to improve the 21st Century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity?

3-    Is it going to contribute to improve their metacognition and reflective skills?

4-    Is it going to provide them with the skills they need to survive in an increasingly interconnected and digital world?

SOURCE: MED KHARBACH EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY AND MOBILE LEARNING

In our increasingly interconnected and digital world, using technology is inevitable but our learning goals and pedagogy should determine the technology that we are going to use in the classroom. We should be active participants in a model where technology is the tool, not the focus. The entire focus should be on learning and the new pedagogy.

 In the introduction of his book English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work, Linworth Publishing 2010, Larry Ferlazzo says, as language teachers we should help our students:

  • Learn a new language of how to engage in the world and with each other.
  • Use their own traditions and stories to re-imagine themselves and their dreams.
  • Tap into their own intrinsic motivation and embark on a journey of action, discovery, and learning.
  • Develop the confidence to take risks, make mistakes and learn from them, try new things, and develop a discipline of self-reflection.

While we are trying to accomplish all these, we should carefully choose the tools that will help us achieve our goals and prepare our students for the future.

SOURCE: EDTECH REVIEW

 As for the examples about how we are integrating technology at my school, I would like to start with my Learnist board that I curated for the 12th grade persuasive essay unit. When one of my colleagues had to stay in hospital for 3 months, I took over his classes in the middle of the school year. Because I didn’t know the students well, I prepared a Learnist board for them on Persuasive Writing with videos, texts and interactives for different types of learners with different levels of English. In the first lesson, we discussed why it is important for the students to master persuasive style and writing and determined our learning goals. I asked the students to choose and watch/read the ones that were appropriate for their levels and needs at home. In the next lesson, we analyzed a sample persuasive essay on the Smartboard and the students told me how it matched with the information they learned at home. At the end of the lesson, I asked them to read/watch some more texts/videos at home as they were going to have a quiz on persuasive writing the following day.

The results of the quiz gave me clues about my students’ weak points. Some needed to work more on the persuasive style, while others needed to work on the organization of the essay, and so on. So, I grouped them according to their weak points and gave them essays that needed to be improved. Students were free to refer to the curated materials on Learnist while they were rewriting the essays to improve them. At the end of the task, each group presented the essays they improved to the class explaining what changes they had made and why. During each presentation, they received oral feedback from me and their peers. At that point, since I got to know them and their weak points and needs, I recommended each student to read/watch some specific materials on Learnist at home and asked all of them to write a journal entry in their reflection journals on what they have learned about persuasive style and writing.

After the presentations, I showed them the rubric I prepared for this task on the Smartboard, telling them that I was flexible with it and asked them to make suggestions to finalize it. Some students were really surprised and didn’t want to participate as they were not used to the idea of preparing the evaluation criteria with the teacher, but others with more open mindsets were willing to participate. We went over the rubric together, made some changes on it depending on the students’ suggestions and determined our evaluation criteria together. Then, the students chose one of the topics out of the ones that I gave them and started brainstorming and planning their essays. After that, they started writing their first drafts. The next steps were peer and self-review and editing. You can see the samples of peer and self-review forms on Learnist. As the last step, they wrote their final drafts and completed the evaluation forms for self-reflection. During the entire process, they received oral and written feedback from me and their peers at each step and were free to use their tablets or smartphones in the classroom to refer to the materials on Learnist and to use online dictionaries and other vocabulary tools. As a post-writing vocabulary activity, the students were given four choices and asked to do one of them.

Using 8 new words that you have learned in this task:

1-    Complete a vocabulary journal (Hard copy – for students who aren’t comfortable with technology)

2-    Go to Quizlet or Vocabulary Ahead, or a similar vocabulary tool to prepare 8 flashcards and a vocabulary quiz.

3-    Go to Quizlet or Vocabulary Ahead, or a similar vocabulary tool to make 1-2-minute vocabulary video for each word.

4-    Create a visual using Snappy Words, Graph Words, or a similar vocabulary tool.

During this activity, I reminded my students that they should be actively involved in and take the responsibility of their own learning process from determining the learning goals to determining the success criteria and reflecting on their learning to see where they are in the learning process and what steps they should take to reach their next goal. I noticed that because they are studying in a system where achievement is closely related to success on standardized tests, students were easily demotivated when they made mistakes. They had a fear of failure. I tried to explain them that we can’t learn anything or improve without making mistakes; so, they shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes.

SOURCE: WHAT ED SAID via TOONDOO

Students at all levels love digital storytelling as it gives them the opportunity to share knowledge and to express themselves freely and creatively in mediums they are familiar with and they think are cool. Our 4th grade students were asked to create their own stories using Voicethread after they studied Our Community unit. You can see two samples by following the links below:

https://voicethread.com/share/5197982/

https://voicethread.com/share/5115539/

We have a Prep class between 8th and 9th grades for students who don’t know enough English to be able to follow the high school program. The Prezis below have been created by two of our Prep students for the horror story task given right after the Halloween.

We believe that blogs are great tools to promote learning and improve the writing skills of our students. We have class blogs at all levels in middle school and in Prep. One of our purposes is to enable our students to connect to the wider world, share their work with a real audience and receive comments and feedback. This is a class blog for our 5th grade students who came to our school and started learning English for the first time this year.

We also encourage our students to participate in global collaborative projects to develop cultural understanding and global awareness by interacting with learners of other cultures. Here you can see the first posts of our 6th grade students participating in the International Cookbook Project on Edmodo which is about to start very soon.

We strongly believe in the benefits of game-based learning. Games are effective learning tools and an important aspect of our students’ learning adventures. We have a portal of online resources for our students and in one section there are games for students from K-9. Here you can see the grade 3 and grade 6 Games pages.

How do you integrate tech into your school curriculum? I would love to hear your comments and feedback.

INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY CREATIVELY TO TRANSFORM LEARNING

Technology has enabled us to access to more content and information than ever before. Therefore,  the instructional paradigm shift today requires us to focus on the human expressive capability rather than knowledge. We can transform learning by creating and sharing knowledge in many ways. In the past, consuming and producing words through reading and writing and, to a lesser extent, listening and speaking were enough while teaching literacy. Students were using these skills often to show that they knew or memorized the information. Today, what students make, design, invent is much more important than what they know. Digital expression is the new literacy and creativity is the new fluency.

By Jason Elsom

With the introduction of the inexpensive, easy-to-use, and widely available technology tools, digital literacy – including sound, graphics, and moving images – has become popular. Integrating digital literacy, art, oral literacy and writing into a single narrative or “media collage,” such as a Web page, a video, an e-portfolio or a blog is crucial for personal, academic and workplace success in our age.

SOURCE: Flickr (Created by Langwitches)

The reason why digital storytelling has become so popular is because students love expressing themselves using different forms of media. Through e-portfolios, blogs, slide presentations, animations and visually differentiated text, students can demonstrate learning in ways that require them to analyze, synthesize, evaluate and apply what they know about a particular content domain. What motivates students more is the fact that their work will be shared and assessed not only by their classmates and teachers but by a global audience as well. Many students are excited about this and they say they try a lot harder for the global audience. Via social networking students interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. Using social media in the classroom will surely increase student engagement as it is a real life experience. Through collaborative global projects students will develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures and contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems, all of which are essential 21st century skills.

EMPOWERING STUDENTS VIA BLENDED AND FLIPPED LEARNING

Today, educators all around the world are rethinking the traditional school model as they are expected to personalize learning and boost achievement. The changing paradigms in education and the expectations of the society have resulted in new learning models, one of which is blended learning. Blended learning is a shift to an online environment for at least a portion of the school day. This digital portion gives the students the opportunity to study at their own pace and get personalized instruction targeted to their needs and tailored to their unique learning styles. The videos below describe the fundamentals of blended learning:

While planning blended learning, educators should start with learning goals and decide on platform and content accordingly. Learning tools should never dictate the learning goals. Blended learning allows students to learn some of the academic content at home and gives teachers the ability to engage students in a richer, deeper, and more meaningful context in the classroom. Therefore, teachers can maximize their teaching abilities and be more creative in their ways of educating students. In the video below the founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan sketches a plan on how digital learning tools can enable teachers and students to allocate more time for real-life creative learning experiences:

SOURCE: Edutopia

SOURCE: DIGITAL LEARNING NOW!

Flipped Learning is one type of blended learning in which the classroom activities and homework elements of a course are reversed. Students watch short video lectures at home before the class session so that more time can be allocated for social interaction, discussions, active and experiential learning experience, critical thinking and problem solving activities, inquiry learning and creative projects during class time. Teachers should check understanding to group students according to their levels and assign tasks accordingly. Student advancement should be based upon competency and mastery of the material. Differentiated instruction, active learning and student engagement are the key concepts in a flipped classroom where students are expected to take full responsibility for their learning. During class time, teachers function as coaches or advisors, encouraging students in individual inquiry and collaborative effort.

In the YouTube video below, 8th grade math teacher, Katie explains why she is using the flipped classroom model:

Video lectures are either created by the teacher and posted online or selected from a website. The YouTube video below gives tips on how to do that:

Flipped Learning has its pros and cons like all the other learning models. I personally think that all learning models that are student-centered, that enhance higher order thinking skills and creativity, and help students internalize the other 21st century skills will enhance learning and will eventually contribute to their test-prep skills much more than the teach-to-the-test models.

What is a flipped Classroom

SOURCE: Visually

 

Some free resources that teachers can use for blended or flipped learning are listed in the slides below:

However, flipped learning is not about finding and using resources and tools. It is about the learning that takes place in the classroom. Teachers should be active participants in this learning model, which makes technology the tool, not the focus. Therefore, professional development on blended or flipped learning should not only focus on the use of technology, but cover key areas in learning such as differentiated instruction and inquiry-based learning. Moreover, teachers should be equipped with  effective classroom management skills as inspired and passionate classroom facilitators, creating environments where students thrive.

Flipped Classroom

SOURCE: KNEWTON

If they are implemented correctly, blended and flipped learning models may have a positive impact on education in new learning environments that work better for students and teachers. Therefore, schools should invest in training and development. They should also plan scheduling to enable teachers to collaborate, develop, and analyze student data in-school time; and give them credit and accountability for the growth of their students. Flipped learning, together  with a supportive school environment that values 21st century skills and effective leveraging of new technologies to enhance student inquiry and personalize learning, has the potential to transform education. Teachers who want more information on flipped learning, can watch the Flipping playlist by Spartan Guides below and check the EdSurge page on blended learning.


What do you think about blended learning? Have you flipped your classes? If so, please let me know about your experience.

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY INTO THE 21st CENTURY CLASSROOM – PART 2: TRANSFORMING LEARNING

After my previous post, some colleagues asked me what I think the best web tools are and which ones we are using at my school. I am going to answer this question in a future post when I write about tools and websites for English teachers. On the other hand, I think there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Schools or individual teachers should choose them by considering their learning objectives and expectations for the school year and manipulate them to serve their needs. In other words, learning should drive the technology rather than technology driving learning. Therefore, the choice of these tools may change from one school to the other depending on the learning objectives and expectations. Indeed, it isn’t really about the tools, it is about how you use them to enhance learning and  to combine the incredible powers of the human brain with the creative potential of the new technology.

The chart by Teachbytes below shows the difference between using technology just for the sake of using equipment and web tools and integrating it to serve specific purposes to transform and enhance learning.

We all know that our students are motivated if they are given the opportunity to choose and if their curiosity is triggered. Big questions that are interesting and difficult to answer, encourage students to offer theories instead of giving answers.  Moreover, they learn much better if they interact socially. If they are allowed to discover and experiment in flexible and creative environments where they are not afraid of making mistakes, they can construct their own understanding of new concepts by relating them to what they already know with the guidance and encouragement of their teachers. Otherwise, it is against the human nature to expect them to sit at their desks all day long, trying to learn what we have planned to teach them. Research has proved that if curiosity is not triggered, the human brain can’t retain or internalize information.

All this information matches with the 21st Century skills that our students have to master to be ready for the future. Therefore, inquiry, project, and challenge–based learning are the key learning approaches today. Provided that they are carefully planned and conducted, all these approaches align with the requirements of the 21st century education. Learners are faced with authentic situations to explore and solve problems. They are involved in social interaction via collaboration. Learning is structured around big or essential questions, which require higher order thinking skills. Students use their critical thinking skills to solve problems and innovative skills to come up with their own solutions.

SOURCE: Essential questions by Susan Oxnevad (Please hover your mouse and click on the interactive images).    

Luckily, technology provides us with many tools to adapt these approaches more easily and effectively in and outside the classroom. It also helps us to access information like how our students learn best and how we can make learning real, more enjoyable and engaging for all types of learners in the classroom. Consequently, it enables us to reconsider the old methodologies we have been using and discover, learn, unlearn and relearn the new pedagogies that increase learner engagement and autonomy. Many people think that transforming education in the 21st century is about using modern technology. However, it is mostly about our approach to learning.    

 
SOURCE: TEACHER FACILITATED LEARNING EXPERIENCES by Susan Oxnevad (Please hover your mouse and click on the interactive images).

As educators we already know that every child learns differently, so our job should be to give them choices to express what they know in various ways and give them the opportunity to use their imagination through innovation. Technology offers us many different tools to differentiate our instruction according to the diverse needs and interests of our learners and to personalize learning.

SOURCE: FLEXIBLE LEARNING PATHS by Susan Oxnevad (Please hover your mouse and click on the interactive images).

If the purpose of schooling is to enable the students to discover who they are and what their talents and passions are, why are students still being loaded with irrelevant information they will forget before the school year ends? Today, we need teachers who can foster curiosity and exploration and guide their students to find joy in learning and discovery through their passions and interests.  Only this type of schooling can motivate disengaged teenagers bored of traditional schooling. The graphics below illustrate how the source of information and the way we build knowledge have changed in the 21st Century:

 

SOURCE: Richard Wells http://ipad4schools.org/

With all this in mind, we should see technology not only as an aide to learning  but as an important factor to transform learning, helping us create dynamic learning environments where learners become active participants in their own learning, rather than passive recipients of knowledge. This new definition of learning shouldn’t focus on getting high marks. We should care more about our students’ cognitive needs than the results they achieve at school.  We should encourage them to create and share information instead of memorizing it so that we can instill the joy and love of learning in them. They need to know how to think critically, creatively, and to evaluate multiple viewpoints. In these new learning environments enhanced by technology, the teachers are learners, too. They don’t control the learning any more, but instead, try to empower their students to take ownership of their own learning as passionate learners. This will eventually open the doors to self-directed learning by increasing learners’ involvement and responsibility for their own learning.

SOURCE: Med Kharbach Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

Of course, all these changes won’t be easy but  as we often tell our students, we should all have the confidence to take risks, learn from our mistakes, try new things, and develop a discipline of self-reflection to become the change agents in our communities.

Video for teachers on becoming a change agent by Justin Tarte.

Please share how you have personally transformed education.

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY INTO THE 21st CENTURY CLASSROOM – PART 1: WEB TOOLS

Today, there are many websites, tools, and resources that are readily available to us through the WWW. In order to introduce these applications to our students and implement them into our classrooms, we need to know where to find them and how to use them. As educators we already know that every child learns differently, so providing various means to give our students the opportunity to express what they know and to use their imagination through innovation has become part of 21st century teaching, which every teacher should practice.

The New Way of Learning infographic by the Adidas Group gives us hints about why and how we should transform learning:

Even if they aren’t familiar with technology and consequently don’t feel comfortable with it, each teacher should give it a try to transform teaching and learning as it is worth doing. As a first step you can start by talking to your colleagues who are teaching with technology. You will find out that their students are demonstrating a greater responsibility for their learning, they are more active in their classes than they used to be, both as leaders and peer tutors, contributing to problem-solving discussions, teaching each other and developing more collaborative learning skills. In fact, there are so many helpful guides and resources available on the internet that you will soon find out it is not as difficult as you have imagined.  

 

A Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet is a great source for beginners to technology integration. After reading it, you may continue with Technology Integration Professional Development Guide by Edutopia.

Learning with web tools is a great opportunity for our students as they will help them tremendously in their future jobs. Even if they do not use these skills in a future job, they can use it for their own personal needs. Mobile Devices for Learning – a guide by Edutopia is a good way to start learning about web tools. After reading it, you may continue with 20 Educational Technology Tools Everybody Should Know About by Edudemic. When you feel comfortable with technology, you can visit Cybrary Man’s Web 2.0 page and A Practical Guide to the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2013. You can also check my Pinterest Web Tools board for further information on Web 2.0 tools. Finally, you can find presentations, e-books, and posts on Web 2.0 tools and sites on Free Tech for Teachers by Richard Byrnes and Technology Tidbits by David Kapular.

Once you have decided to integrate technology into your classroom, there are several important points you should consider:

  • Before you start using technology, be sure that you really need to use it. After all, our main goal is not to enable our students to use technology but to develop a love of learning and self-direction so that they can ultimately become life-long learners. Therefore, we should plan lessons and activities that would get them excited about learning and encourage them to go out and learn more on their own. Otherwise, using technology for the sake of being a tech-savvy teacher will be a waste of time.  You can use the assessment sheet by Sue Lyon Jones from The EdTech Hub before you decide about whether you really need to use the tools and read the blog post about Jerry Swiatek’s tips for beginners to avoid making mistakes while integrating technology.

 

  • The technology you are using must be in line with the curriculum and your students’ learning needs and goals. Therefore, you need to find the best tool that will support your lesson and your students’ learning while you are blending technology into your lesson plans. You can visit Edshelf and Ideas to Inspire to be able to do that. You can also find great tips for using technology in Shelley Terrel’s Wiki, Technology 4 Kids. Some teachers may find it useful to watch the five-minute videos on web tools by visiting the Learn It In 5 Blog by Mark Barnes or the videos in Under Ten Minutes.

 

  • Make sure the technology you are using supports higher order thinking skills and help you develop a spirit of inquiry and problem solving. Andrew Churches from Educational Origami and Kelly Tenkely from iLearn Technology have adapted Bloom’s Taxonomy to digital technology. Their ideas will help you determine how you can use technology to enhance higher order thinking skills and create dynamic learning environments where learners take ownership of their own growth and pursue it passionately.

 

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

Considering all the points above is important because the shift in education today is about learning, not about technology. All the tools mentioned above are the means to help us create more exciting, engaging, and ultimately, more effective learning for our students. As teachers in this complex world, we should continuously be learning, implementing, refining, and effectively integrating technology to enrich and extend the curriculum, to enhance and accelerate the types of learning that support the development of our students’ proficiency in the era of creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration, leadership, and communication.

 

Digital Learning, Deeper Learning

TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING IN 21st CENTURY EDUCATION

 

 

During the last decades technology has caused a lot of changes in our lives socially, politically and economically. What about education? Has education changed right along with the demands of the society?Today, many businesses require workers that can work in small, collaborative groups, which means we should use project-based learning in the classroom that allows students to work in small groups and to apply the academic content they are learning to real life situations. They want us to educate students who can be collaborators, thinkers, and innovators. However, in many classrooms, you can still see students sitting isolated in rows, listening to their teachers lecturing at the board all day.

 

 

We all know that we need to get away from teacher-led classrooms and create classrooms that are learner centered to meet the demands of our rapidly changing world and we have a great tool to be able to do that: technology. We all agree that we have to do everything to empower our students for their future. Then, why don’t we integrate it in education since we have the means to make a change in learning so that our students can create, communicate, connect and collaborate to be contributing citizens to their future!

 

In the video below, Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D, discusses his views on the importance of technology in learning and the need to revolutionize education to give kids the skills they need to compete in an increasingly interconnected and digital world.

 

 

Teaching with technology does not mean uploading lessons on tablets and giving them to students to use. It has two other important dimensions. Bringing technology to our classrooms will help our students become digitally savvy by using the web 2.0 tools that will enhance their learning and creativity. If we give our students the opportunity to use these tools during the learning process, we will see the very many ways they will help us create students who can think critically, problem solve, and work collaboratively. Today, most jobs require the use of technology, which is another reason why teachers should give students experience working with technology through group projects and classroom assignments to be able to prepare them for the future. We should also consider the fact that we are preparing many of our students for jobs that do not exist yet.

 

The second important dimension is related to social networking, which has an incredible impact on learning. Students have the capability of learning from each other through the use of social sites, with the supervision and support of their teachers. By enabling them to connect with people around the globe, we will be opening their minds to perspectives and experiences that go far beyond the four walls of the classroom.

As a further step, we can also publish student work for a global audience and have them teach others what they have learned by presenting or sharing their work online. This will help students think about how they can give back to the broader learning community and how this can help shape their future. It will also give the students the opportunity to be assessed by a global audience. They will eventually become self-directed learners through the guidance of their skillful teachers who know when, where and how to use technology to enable this. Therefore, instead of banning the use of many technological devices in the classrooms, school administrations should encourage and train teachers to use them. Please watch the video below showing how one principal made a change in his school and went from being anti-social media to being known as ‘Mr. Twitter’ by his students.

 

 

Integrating technology in education has another important dimension from the teachers’ perspective: Networking between schools both nationally and internationally, where educators and administrators can work collaboratively and share educational resources and practices. The concept of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) has become important as teachers and administrators all around the globe can exchange ideas, and share resources with the spread of technology and social networking sites like Twitter, Pinterest, Diigo and many others. Today, educators who have never met before have become connected and Personal Learning Networks (PLN) have a significant role in professional development. They create connections and develop a network that contributes to their professional development and knowledge with people they don’t necessarily know. Connected Principals blog is a good example of 21st century collaboration among principals.

 


 

We often discuss how teachers find teaching with technology in the classroom, what is difficult and what is easy for them when confronted with tech tools. It also might be worth looking at how our students, digital natives – people very much at home with these technologies – think about education and what is important for them in the digital age. The infographic by MacMillan Education below shows how students go beyond traditional forms of education and how we can apply mobile learning into everyday teaching.

Via: Voxy Blog

 

Does this mean that technology is the only solution to the problems in education? Of course not! There is no substitute for a skillful teacher in the classroom who effectively plans instruction according to the needs of each learner to actively engage and involve them in the learning process, creating a learning environment allowing the students to communicate and collaborate with others effectively and to be innovative. Technology is a tool that needs to be coupled with effective teaching from educators to enhance the learning process for students. Therefore, we need highly skilled teachers that can creatively use technology in the classroom to create a meaningful 21st century learning environment for students.

 

 

 

I strongly believe that, if used appropriately and meaningfully and combined with effective teaching strategies, digital technology helps learning to be active, engaging, and fun. Therefore, we should all be the facilitators of these opportunities so that our students can learn in a safe and meaningful way and can become connected learners just like us. If we do that, students will not only contribute to their future, but define and lead it as well. In this amazing, rapidly changing era where we can enhance and accelerate learning by integrating technology in education, the schools that understand the importance of education technology and provide their staff and students with training and access to digital learning tools will certainly have a distinct advantage over the others who ban or disregard them.

Credits to Crissy Venosdale

 

What do you think about teaching with technology and its role in enhancing learning?
How do you manage your PLN? Please let me know.