Micro blogging is sharing frequent and brief information in web through specified platform. Generally micro blogging services allow its users to send and read other users’ updates through text-based posts. But now this has been changed and it can be any sort of input like text, video, audio etc… Text messages are uploaded to a microblogging service such as Twitter, Jaiku and others, then distributed to group members. All parties subscribed in the targeted group are instantly notified of the microblog, enabling groups to keep tabs on one another’s activities in real time.
Some advantages of microblogging are that the updates you make in micro blogging sites can be visible to community members to all users depending upon the platform that is used. Unlike messengers where people type messages to a person (or rarely a group), with micro blogging many more people can interact at the same time as they can all see their messages. Instead of spending hours together to narrate a blog post, micro blogging platform can be used effectively to share things people wish to. With twitter, for example, people can exchange information quickly about personal topics or any other topic they are interested in. By means of it, language learners can be encouraged to take part in discussions aboy language topics and carry out language tasks in which they have to write brief messages in a meaningful way. Language teachers can use them to share ideas and discuss topics with their students providing quick feedback to them.
One of the disadvantages of microblogging would be the limitation in characters and the fact that it is prone to getting off topic quite easily. In I my particular teaching context, I think I could use it especially with high school students. On a microblogging platform, the students could send and receive messages related to language topics and I could use it as an effective strategy for dealing with the isolation that can come from working in the classroom. For example, if I encounter technical difficulties during a lesson I can have a means of receiving assistance within minutes since with microblogging I have the opportunity to receive assistance from others during a teachable moment in which, for example, I don’t know the answer to a student’s inquiry.
martes, 24 de noviembre de 2009
Blogs and wikis
Benefits of blogs
Blogs are easy to create. You don't need any advance and expensive softwares to create a blog. You just have to sign up to blog providers (Blogger, wordpress, typepad , etc). Then you have to follow a few steps and and start posting. Blogs are easy to maintain. You don't need any software to maintain your blog. You can maintain your blog online. After you sign in to your blog account you can create a post, edit post, change blog template, customize your blog and change blog settings easily. Blogs automatically move your newer posts at the top, while archiving older posts by date or topic you don't have to bother to move your pages around. Blogs are search engine friendly. Since each post of the blog is assigned with different URL address, each of them will have its own and separate web page. If you care of making good posts focused on a specific topic and carefully choose good keywords describing your posts then it will have more chance of ranking well with search engines. Blogs allows you to interact with your students. Blogs allow you to interact with your students and give them feedback. Since blog offers you the option of enabling a comment field to your posts where readers can give you their feedback. It not only makes the students come back but also it gives you a great chance to know your students better. Blog are for free. Anybody can start blogging in just few minutes and you can display any information to other teachers or your students. Blogs give you lots of space. You can make as much number of posts as you like in your blog. You can upload many documents, videos and images.
Suggestions for implementation of blogs
• Blog sites should be developed with the help of students following simple procedures.
• Teachers and students blogs should go public at the educational institutions, in other words, they could be accessed and read by everyone in the community to foster interaction.
• The usage of blogs is very convenient and it should be used by students more frequently..
• Students can improve their writing skills and blog articles should be reasonably good enough and free grammatical mistakes.
• Blogs get students into the habit of writing, which helps them in all their future endeavors.
• Blog sites should be used as online class forums that enable students with various personalities to participate in discussions far more effectively.
• Using blogs students can learn to express their opinions and exchange their views on topics of common interest, which not only keeps them updated but also allows them to contribute new ideas.
• Language students get a chance to read other blogs, which indirectly helps them to improve upon their language skills.
• Language teachers of online classes get an opportunity to know what students feel about the class and help to find ways to improve students’ progress.
• Blogs can also be used for language students to share their articles and opinions with people outside their educational community.
My preferred blog platform
I prefer using the Blogger platform within only five minutes you can be set up and bloggin. A feature called ‘Blog This!’ on the Google Toolbar lets you use the toolbar and have Blogger accounts to put links directly to your blogs. It allows establishment of group blogs as it supports multiple author entries. It has individual pages to archive comments, posts and email postings. It supports Google AdSense service while running a blog. And last but not least, Blogger is free.
Benefits of wikis
It is an online space where any number of users can post, edit and sort ideas and tangents for a project. You can make your projects much more straightforward because instead of jotting down ideas in notebooks, sending files via e-mail and constantly having to ask where your colleagues are, you can keep it all organised online, and access all this information from anywhere with an internet connection. Wikis are good for projects that require collaboration, where information needs to be archived, and where several individuals need access to the same information and need to be kept up to date on changes. Wikis can be used by educational institutions to connect students in different departments and create knowledge bases for various projects, Wikis have the ability to compress space allowing users from all parts of their organizations in essentially the same space. Wikis are a great way of keeping track of ideas and removing clumsy methods of communication and administration.
Suggestions for implementation of wikis
I suggest teachers to use wikis for getting their students more involved in curriculum. They’re often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. The following are some examples of how wikis could be implemented in the classroom:
• Asking groups to use central documents in a wiki to ensure that everyone’s documentation is uniform.
• Allowing class members to post their ideas in a wiki, and you can cut down on duplicate ideas, while at the same time allowing them to build upon the ideas.
• Starting fan clubs for your students’ favorite figures from history and ask them to contribute their favorite quotes, photos, and other information together.
• You can use wikis to make it easy for students to see which tasks have been completed and which ones still need to be fulfilled.
• Assigning a wiki page to a group project, and then individual pages for each student to show their participation.
• Selecting two class candidates against each other and perform a debate on your wiki.
• Starting a creative writing unit, and getting students to write a short story together, each writing a small amount of the story.
• Posting articles for different movies, books, and TV shows, encouraging students to share what they thought about them.
• Hosting a book club on your wiki where students are required to read the same book, then discuss it on the wiki.
My preferred wiki platform
I prefer Wetpaint wiki platform because it is built on the power of collaborative thinking. Here, you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich community; it is a social website that is easy to use and anyone can participate. Wetpaint features are very basic and things such as tables, links, and photos can be added by just a few clicks of your mouse. When you hit easy edit a toolbar appears with many options for you to choose from. You can easily browse pages in the navigation on the left. by clicking the arrows you are able to view the sub pages of a certain page. In my opinion Wetpaint is quick and easy to learn.
Blogs are easy to create. You don't need any advance and expensive softwares to create a blog. You just have to sign up to blog providers (Blogger, wordpress, typepad , etc). Then you have to follow a few steps and and start posting. Blogs are easy to maintain. You don't need any software to maintain your blog. You can maintain your blog online. After you sign in to your blog account you can create a post, edit post, change blog template, customize your blog and change blog settings easily. Blogs automatically move your newer posts at the top, while archiving older posts by date or topic you don't have to bother to move your pages around. Blogs are search engine friendly. Since each post of the blog is assigned with different URL address, each of them will have its own and separate web page. If you care of making good posts focused on a specific topic and carefully choose good keywords describing your posts then it will have more chance of ranking well with search engines. Blogs allows you to interact with your students. Blogs allow you to interact with your students and give them feedback. Since blog offers you the option of enabling a comment field to your posts where readers can give you their feedback. It not only makes the students come back but also it gives you a great chance to know your students better. Blog are for free. Anybody can start blogging in just few minutes and you can display any information to other teachers or your students. Blogs give you lots of space. You can make as much number of posts as you like in your blog. You can upload many documents, videos and images.
Suggestions for implementation of blogs
• Blog sites should be developed with the help of students following simple procedures.
• Teachers and students blogs should go public at the educational institutions, in other words, they could be accessed and read by everyone in the community to foster interaction.
• The usage of blogs is very convenient and it should be used by students more frequently..
• Students can improve their writing skills and blog articles should be reasonably good enough and free grammatical mistakes.
• Blogs get students into the habit of writing, which helps them in all their future endeavors.
• Blog sites should be used as online class forums that enable students with various personalities to participate in discussions far more effectively.
• Using blogs students can learn to express their opinions and exchange their views on topics of common interest, which not only keeps them updated but also allows them to contribute new ideas.
• Language students get a chance to read other blogs, which indirectly helps them to improve upon their language skills.
• Language teachers of online classes get an opportunity to know what students feel about the class and help to find ways to improve students’ progress.
• Blogs can also be used for language students to share their articles and opinions with people outside their educational community.
My preferred blog platform
I prefer using the Blogger platform within only five minutes you can be set up and bloggin. A feature called ‘Blog This!’ on the Google Toolbar lets you use the toolbar and have Blogger accounts to put links directly to your blogs. It allows establishment of group blogs as it supports multiple author entries. It has individual pages to archive comments, posts and email postings. It supports Google AdSense service while running a blog. And last but not least, Blogger is free.
Benefits of wikis
It is an online space where any number of users can post, edit and sort ideas and tangents for a project. You can make your projects much more straightforward because instead of jotting down ideas in notebooks, sending files via e-mail and constantly having to ask where your colleagues are, you can keep it all organised online, and access all this information from anywhere with an internet connection. Wikis are good for projects that require collaboration, where information needs to be archived, and where several individuals need access to the same information and need to be kept up to date on changes. Wikis can be used by educational institutions to connect students in different departments and create knowledge bases for various projects, Wikis have the ability to compress space allowing users from all parts of their organizations in essentially the same space. Wikis are a great way of keeping track of ideas and removing clumsy methods of communication and administration.
Suggestions for implementation of wikis
I suggest teachers to use wikis for getting their students more involved in curriculum. They’re often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. The following are some examples of how wikis could be implemented in the classroom:
• Asking groups to use central documents in a wiki to ensure that everyone’s documentation is uniform.
• Allowing class members to post their ideas in a wiki, and you can cut down on duplicate ideas, while at the same time allowing them to build upon the ideas.
• Starting fan clubs for your students’ favorite figures from history and ask them to contribute their favorite quotes, photos, and other information together.
• You can use wikis to make it easy for students to see which tasks have been completed and which ones still need to be fulfilled.
• Assigning a wiki page to a group project, and then individual pages for each student to show their participation.
• Selecting two class candidates against each other and perform a debate on your wiki.
• Starting a creative writing unit, and getting students to write a short story together, each writing a small amount of the story.
• Posting articles for different movies, books, and TV shows, encouraging students to share what they thought about them.
• Hosting a book club on your wiki where students are required to read the same book, then discuss it on the wiki.
My preferred wiki platform
I prefer Wetpaint wiki platform because it is built on the power of collaborative thinking. Here, you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich community; it is a social website that is easy to use and anyone can participate. Wetpaint features are very basic and things such as tables, links, and photos can be added by just a few clicks of your mouse. When you hit easy edit a toolbar appears with many options for you to choose from. You can easily browse pages in the navigation on the left. by clicking the arrows you are able to view the sub pages of a certain page. In my opinion Wetpaint is quick and easy to learn.
Collaborative and Transformative Learning
Collaborative learning
From my point of view, collaborative learning is an instruction method that every teacher should implement in his/her classroom since it allows learners at various performance levels to work together in small groups toward a common goal and the learners are responsible for one another's learning as well as their own. Thus, the success of one learner helps other students to be successful.
Some of its advantages, which are many, include that it develops higher level thinking skills, promotes student-faculty interaction and familiarity, increases student retention, builds self esteem in students, enhances student satisfaction with the learning experience, promotes a positive attitude toward the subject matter, develops oral communication skills, develops social interaction skills, promotes positive race relations, creates an environment of active, involved, exploratory learning, uses a team approach to problem solving while maintaining individual accountability, encourages diversity understanding, encourages student responsibility for learning, involves students in developing curriculum and class procedures, students explore alternate problem solutions in a safe environment, stimulates critical thinking and helps students clarify ideas through discussion and debate, enhances self management skills, fits in well with the constructivist approach , establishes an atmosphere of cooperation and helping schoolwide, students develop responsibility for each other, builds more positive heterogeneous relationships, and encourages alternate student assessment techniques.
In the ELT context collaborative learning can be achieved by having students work together in groups to reach common goals; students benefit from sharing ideas rather than working alone. Students help one another so that all can reach some measure of success learning the foreign language. Students can have short meetings, often between pairs, to simply discuss and share information from a lecture, movie, etc. or they can be encouraged to work together on language projects or creative language activities or an specific language content. All members may be working on a different portion to bring together as a whole or they may all be working on the some language task. Collaborative learning in the ELT classroom can also be possible implementing activities such as jigsaw, group investigations, student language teams and learning together projects in which they have to use the second language.
Transformative learning
Taking into accoubt that transformative learning is a form of education involving experiences that result in a deep, structural shift in thoughts and feelings, which then inform one's actions, I find particularly interesting that it it fosters and develops capacities that invite people to live more meaningfully fostering ways to invite people to support social transformation that embodies joy, peace and equity for all people.
Some advantages of transformative learning are that it helps to build a sense of community that allows people to foster trust with each other. It also makes people more willing to look more deeply within themselves and reveal patterns, concepts, beliefs and behaviors that need to change in order to affect the common good. Transformative learning encourages people to build community and this means that people are willing to practice respecting and looking out for one another. It allows an individual to listen deeply, to engage in the discovery of learning with others, trusting that others will not use personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities to gain advantage. It fosters the spirit of collaboration and teamwork.
In the ELT context, transformative learning can occur when language students encounter alternative points of view and perspectives about the way they can learn the second language. Exposure to alternatives encourages students to critically question their assumptions about the language. Transformative learning can be promoted by language teachers using any strategy, activity, or resource that presents students with an alternative point of view. Listening and readings activities from different perspectives, field experiences, videos, role plays, simulations, and asking challenging questions all have the potential to lead to transformative learning in the ELT classroom. The language teacher needs to create an environment in which critical reflection and questioning norms is supported and encouraged while learning the language.
Transformative learning must not be an “add on” to a language course, it must be a way of making meaning of language knowledge in a way that students don’t passively accept and believe what they are told or what they read or listen to, but rather engage in oral activities such as debates, discussions, and critical questioning of the content they study in the foreign language.
From my point of view, collaborative learning is an instruction method that every teacher should implement in his/her classroom since it allows learners at various performance levels to work together in small groups toward a common goal and the learners are responsible for one another's learning as well as their own. Thus, the success of one learner helps other students to be successful.
Some of its advantages, which are many, include that it develops higher level thinking skills, promotes student-faculty interaction and familiarity, increases student retention, builds self esteem in students, enhances student satisfaction with the learning experience, promotes a positive attitude toward the subject matter, develops oral communication skills, develops social interaction skills, promotes positive race relations, creates an environment of active, involved, exploratory learning, uses a team approach to problem solving while maintaining individual accountability, encourages diversity understanding, encourages student responsibility for learning, involves students in developing curriculum and class procedures, students explore alternate problem solutions in a safe environment, stimulates critical thinking and helps students clarify ideas through discussion and debate, enhances self management skills, fits in well with the constructivist approach , establishes an atmosphere of cooperation and helping schoolwide, students develop responsibility for each other, builds more positive heterogeneous relationships, and encourages alternate student assessment techniques.
In the ELT context collaborative learning can be achieved by having students work together in groups to reach common goals; students benefit from sharing ideas rather than working alone. Students help one another so that all can reach some measure of success learning the foreign language. Students can have short meetings, often between pairs, to simply discuss and share information from a lecture, movie, etc. or they can be encouraged to work together on language projects or creative language activities or an specific language content. All members may be working on a different portion to bring together as a whole or they may all be working on the some language task. Collaborative learning in the ELT classroom can also be possible implementing activities such as jigsaw, group investigations, student language teams and learning together projects in which they have to use the second language.
Transformative learning
Taking into accoubt that transformative learning is a form of education involving experiences that result in a deep, structural shift in thoughts and feelings, which then inform one's actions, I find particularly interesting that it it fosters and develops capacities that invite people to live more meaningfully fostering ways to invite people to support social transformation that embodies joy, peace and equity for all people.
Some advantages of transformative learning are that it helps to build a sense of community that allows people to foster trust with each other. It also makes people more willing to look more deeply within themselves and reveal patterns, concepts, beliefs and behaviors that need to change in order to affect the common good. Transformative learning encourages people to build community and this means that people are willing to practice respecting and looking out for one another. It allows an individual to listen deeply, to engage in the discovery of learning with others, trusting that others will not use personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities to gain advantage. It fosters the spirit of collaboration and teamwork.
In the ELT context, transformative learning can occur when language students encounter alternative points of view and perspectives about the way they can learn the second language. Exposure to alternatives encourages students to critically question their assumptions about the language. Transformative learning can be promoted by language teachers using any strategy, activity, or resource that presents students with an alternative point of view. Listening and readings activities from different perspectives, field experiences, videos, role plays, simulations, and asking challenging questions all have the potential to lead to transformative learning in the ELT classroom. The language teacher needs to create an environment in which critical reflection and questioning norms is supported and encouraged while learning the language.
Transformative learning must not be an “add on” to a language course, it must be a way of making meaning of language knowledge in a way that students don’t passively accept and believe what they are told or what they read or listen to, but rather engage in oral activities such as debates, discussions, and critical questioning of the content they study in the foreign language.
Educational Implications of Wikinomics
Wikinomics is a term that describes the effects of extensive collaboration and user-participation on the marketplace and corporate world. It is characterized by openness, which includes not only open standards and content but also financial transparency and an open attitude towards external ideas and resources; peering, which replaces hierarchical models with a more collaborative forum; sharing, which is a less proprietary approach to products, intellectual property, bandwidth, scientific knowledge, and acting globally, which involves embracing globalization and ignoring physical and geographical boundaries at both the corporate and individual level.
Educational implications
The logic of wikinomics will affect education by making Wikis and collaborative writing spaces more prevalent applications in many writing-intensive courses, with some instructors finding wikis to be useful for peer editing. The popularity of professors’ lectures uploaded to YouTube will increase and there will be a hunger for educational content that will be made freely and widely available to everyone.
The educational materials will be organized into “portals” or “faculties” that will include any number of “schools,” and each school will have “departments.” “Courses” organized in such a way that all of the courses and learning materials wil be created by “Wikiversity” participants. There will be no admissions criteria; there will be no “professors” Just as with an article in Wikipedia, anyone will be able to contribute course materials, anyone will create a faculty or a school, anyone will lead a course.
Students will be invited to work together, to engage in discussion, to solve problems, and to otherwise “construct their knowledge.” The classroom space itself will be transformed into a kind of platform where students will be invited to explore, create, and construct knowledge.
The role of the teacher will transform from containing and controlling all of the knowledge to managing the platform by setting up and enforcing the rules and procedures that will guide student learning. In this setting, the teacher will serve as the “choice architect” of the learning experience or the one who will establish the context in which students will exercise a fair degree of choice. Teachers and students will come together to form voluntary associations around areas of common interests, but they will be even more self-governed and autonomous. Teachers with an interest in a subject and a desire to share their knowledge with others will enter the platform in order to locate and attract students with a desire to learn. When enough teachers and students coalesce around a particular topic of interest, they will form their own school or department.
The curriculum and the course of study will be more fluid and dynamic than any that has existed before. In a “wiki-ized curriculum”, the courses of study will be “open” to both faculty and students: students not only will be able to choose which courses to take but also will be able to design their own courses.
Educational implications
The logic of wikinomics will affect education by making Wikis and collaborative writing spaces more prevalent applications in many writing-intensive courses, with some instructors finding wikis to be useful for peer editing. The popularity of professors’ lectures uploaded to YouTube will increase and there will be a hunger for educational content that will be made freely and widely available to everyone.
The educational materials will be organized into “portals” or “faculties” that will include any number of “schools,” and each school will have “departments.” “Courses” organized in such a way that all of the courses and learning materials wil be created by “Wikiversity” participants. There will be no admissions criteria; there will be no “professors” Just as with an article in Wikipedia, anyone will be able to contribute course materials, anyone will create a faculty or a school, anyone will lead a course.
Students will be invited to work together, to engage in discussion, to solve problems, and to otherwise “construct their knowledge.” The classroom space itself will be transformed into a kind of platform where students will be invited to explore, create, and construct knowledge.
The role of the teacher will transform from containing and controlling all of the knowledge to managing the platform by setting up and enforcing the rules and procedures that will guide student learning. In this setting, the teacher will serve as the “choice architect” of the learning experience or the one who will establish the context in which students will exercise a fair degree of choice. Teachers and students will come together to form voluntary associations around areas of common interests, but they will be even more self-governed and autonomous. Teachers with an interest in a subject and a desire to share their knowledge with others will enter the platform in order to locate and attract students with a desire to learn. When enough teachers and students coalesce around a particular topic of interest, they will form their own school or department.
The curriculum and the course of study will be more fluid and dynamic than any that has existed before. In a “wiki-ized curriculum”, the courses of study will be “open” to both faculty and students: students not only will be able to choose which courses to take but also will be able to design their own courses.
sábado, 14 de noviembre de 2009
The 21st Century Student
Are today’s students different? }
In order to answer this question we must first ask ourselves: Are people shaped by their environment? The 21st Century environment is all about change. Since technology is moving so quickly, we have to learn to deal with change on a regular bases. We need to learn to deal with the speed and magnitude of change. We used to have a good handle on what was developmentally appropriate for students. As students have access to more technology, they are exposed to more information. Students come to school with a larger knowledge base than they used to, yet they are still emotionally only capable of handling so much. So change means that the nature of education is changing.
What should our students know?
We have to talk about teaching students skills and not tools. Our students will be better prepared for their future if they have skills since the tools become outdated so quickly. The following skills are important:
1. Teach students how to follow their passions
2. Teach students about knowing the right thing to do
3. Teach them about getting it done
4. Teach students about getting things done with others
5. Teach them about doing it creatively
6. And finally, teach students about constantly doing things better
How should we teach them?
There is a new paradigm for learning where kids are teaching themselves with the teacher’s guidance. Children are already doing this outside of the school day. We must never try to teach our students anything, we must only try to create an atmosphere in which they can learn.
Is technology in class a help or a curse?
We must let our students fly with technology. We must let them do the work and our job is to evaluate it. They are the researchers when it comes to the technology, so there is no need for us to create anything, but give them the time to figure it out themselves. This is the model of teaching that we should be striving for from now on.
In order to answer this question we must first ask ourselves: Are people shaped by their environment? The 21st Century environment is all about change. Since technology is moving so quickly, we have to learn to deal with change on a regular bases. We need to learn to deal with the speed and magnitude of change. We used to have a good handle on what was developmentally appropriate for students. As students have access to more technology, they are exposed to more information. Students come to school with a larger knowledge base than they used to, yet they are still emotionally only capable of handling so much. So change means that the nature of education is changing.
What should our students know?
We have to talk about teaching students skills and not tools. Our students will be better prepared for their future if they have skills since the tools become outdated so quickly. The following skills are important:
1. Teach students how to follow their passions
2. Teach students about knowing the right thing to do
3. Teach them about getting it done
4. Teach students about getting things done with others
5. Teach them about doing it creatively
6. And finally, teach students about constantly doing things better
How should we teach them?
There is a new paradigm for learning where kids are teaching themselves with the teacher’s guidance. Children are already doing this outside of the school day. We must never try to teach our students anything, we must only try to create an atmosphere in which they can learn.
Is technology in class a help or a curse?
We must let our students fly with technology. We must let them do the work and our job is to evaluate it. They are the researchers when it comes to the technology, so there is no need for us to create anything, but give them the time to figure it out themselves. This is the model of teaching that we should be striving for from now on.
The 21st Teacher
We have heard alot about the 21st Century Learner, but what about the 21st Century Teacher, what are the characteristics we would expect to see in a 21st Century Educator. We know they are student centric, holistic, they are teaching about how to learn as much as teaching about the subject area. We know too, that they must be 21st Century learners as well. The following are some characteristics of the 21st century teacher.
Adaptor
The 21st Century teacher is an adaptor. Harnessed as we are to an assessment focused education model the 21st Century Educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools utilisable by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on. As an educator, we must understand and apply different learning styles. we must be able to adapt our teaching style to be inclusive of different modes of learning.
Visionary
Imagination, a key component of adaptability, is a crucial component of the educator of today and tommorow. They must see the potential in the emerging tools and web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education?
The visionary teacher can look at others ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class. The visionary also looks across the disciplines and through the curricula. They can make links that reinforce and value learning in other areas, and leverage other fields to reinforce their own teaching and the learning of their students.
Collaborator
As an educator we must be able to leverage collaborative tools to enhance and captivate our learners. We too, must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.
Risk taker
How can you as an educator know all these things? How can you teach them how to use them… There are so many, so much to learn. You must take risks and some times surrender yourself to the students knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have the students teach each other. The learning pyramid shows that the highest retention of knowledge comes from teaching others. Trust your students.
Learner
We expect our students to be life long learners. How many schools have the phrase “life long learners” in their mission statements and objectives. We too must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge. We must endeavour to stay current. Knowledge, understanding and technology are fluid and dynamic, they are evolving and changing. To be a teacher here you must change and learn as the horizons and landscape changes. The 21st Century teacher or educator must learn and adapt.
Communicator
To have anywhere anytime learning, the teacher to must be anywhere and anytime. It does not have to be the same teacher, but the 21st Century teacher is a communicator. They are fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it, they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it.
Model
We must model the behaviours that we expect from our students. Today and tommorow more so, there is an expectation that teachers will teach values. We, are often the most consistent part of our student life. Teachers will see the students more often, for longer and more reliably than their parents. This is not a criticism of the parents rather a reflection.
The 21st Century educator also models reflective practice, whether its the quiet, personal inspection of their teaching and learning, or through reflective practice via blogs, twitter and other medium, these educators look both inwards and outwards. These teachers also model a number of other characteristics. These are not necessarily associated with ICT or the curriculum, but are of equal importance. They model: tolerance, acceptance, a wider view than just their curricula areas, global awareness and reflection.
Adaptor
The 21st Century teacher is an adaptor. Harnessed as we are to an assessment focused education model the 21st Century Educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools utilisable by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on. As an educator, we must understand and apply different learning styles. we must be able to adapt our teaching style to be inclusive of different modes of learning.
Visionary
Imagination, a key component of adaptability, is a crucial component of the educator of today and tommorow. They must see the potential in the emerging tools and web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education?
The visionary teacher can look at others ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class. The visionary also looks across the disciplines and through the curricula. They can make links that reinforce and value learning in other areas, and leverage other fields to reinforce their own teaching and the learning of their students.
Collaborator
As an educator we must be able to leverage collaborative tools to enhance and captivate our learners. We too, must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.
Risk taker
How can you as an educator know all these things? How can you teach them how to use them… There are so many, so much to learn. You must take risks and some times surrender yourself to the students knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have the students teach each other. The learning pyramid shows that the highest retention of knowledge comes from teaching others. Trust your students.
Learner
We expect our students to be life long learners. How many schools have the phrase “life long learners” in their mission statements and objectives. We too must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge. We must endeavour to stay current. Knowledge, understanding and technology are fluid and dynamic, they are evolving and changing. To be a teacher here you must change and learn as the horizons and landscape changes. The 21st Century teacher or educator must learn and adapt.
Communicator
To have anywhere anytime learning, the teacher to must be anywhere and anytime. It does not have to be the same teacher, but the 21st Century teacher is a communicator. They are fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it, they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it.
Model
We must model the behaviours that we expect from our students. Today and tommorow more so, there is an expectation that teachers will teach values. We, are often the most consistent part of our student life. Teachers will see the students more often, for longer and more reliably than their parents. This is not a criticism of the parents rather a reflection.
The 21st Century educator also models reflective practice, whether its the quiet, personal inspection of their teaching and learning, or through reflective practice via blogs, twitter and other medium, these educators look both inwards and outwards. These teachers also model a number of other characteristics. These are not necessarily associated with ICT or the curriculum, but are of equal importance. They model: tolerance, acceptance, a wider view than just their curricula areas, global awareness and reflection.
Education for the 21st century
Technology is reshaping the world’s education system and we as teachers have to be prepared for education in a near future. In particular, the technology to deliver full-length courses online is rapidly becoming a reality. The creation and delivery of courses over the Web will be the driving force for educational change in the 21st century.
The computer will allow the creation of "learn by doing" courses designed by the best and the brightest experts in any given field. Quality universities will put their names on these courses, and companies will create them, guaranteeing employment to those who pass them. This will create tremendous change for everyone involved in the education system.
Teachers’ new role
The teaching of traditional academic subjects, first in high school and later in elementary school, will be increasingly done via online courses. Eventually school libraries will contain hundreds of these courses. Teachers will be left to provide things that technology cannot: personal one-on-one tutoring; teaching kids how to work in a group to accomplish something; and teaching crucial interpersonal relationship skills.
Initially teachers may feel disenfranchised by this. But an important opportunity will emerge for teaching social skills that students desperately need, and teachers will understand they need to be the ones to fill this role. Today there is a push to measure teachers by their students’ test scores. Tomorrow, teachers will be judged by more meaningful measures as we begin to value them for their human qualities.
Not only will teachers act much more as social workers or guidance counselors in the future, they will also lead courses that explicitly focus on developing social and interpersonal skills. The teacher will be an advisor to the team, or a guide on an expedition. Right now teachers are authority figures. Once teachers move out of that role, they will eliminate a roadblock that prevents them from connecting with the students who need the most guidance.
Primary education
One of the biggest problems we have in elementary school is the amount of time kids are forced to sit still. Sitting still is so hard, and it’s the last thing young children want to do. I’d rather see kids spending more time playing than doing academics. While I think there is a valuable lesson in teaching a seven-year-old to sit down and focus on a task, that task shouldn’t be doing 1,400 multiplication tables.
Elementary school should be simply about reading, writing and arithmetic, about acquiring good work habits, and perhaps most importantly, about instilling a love of learning in each child. A lot of what in today’s school system is considered extracurricular, like putting out a school paper, ought to be the curriculum. Students learn more that way than any other way.
Schools and their new role
We are moving in a direction where everybody is staring at a computer or a television all day and all night and not interacting with other people in a meaningful way. I think the schools will have to be the counterbalance to this trend, to actively provide opportunities for social interaction and to teach the skills required for successful interaction with other individuals. Part of the job of the school must be to help students learn how to work together and to be a functional part of society.
The school itself will evolve into a sort of student or community center, where kids are engaged in a variety of activities and projects. There will be a tremendous range of activities, but they will not be as purely academic as they currently are. When students are not participating in these activities, they will be taking online courses at home, or if the supervision there doesn’t allow it, at school.
Schools will become much more connected to the community around them as activities bring students more and more into contact with their community. They will also become more connected to local businesses, as students have the opportunity to engage in real-world jobs with local employers. The school will become the center of the community in a much deeper way than it currently is.
Curriculum centralization and instructional development
The advent of ubiquitous networking technology will lead to the centralization of key functions in the education system, just as it has in the business world.
First, the delivery of education via online courses will change the entire landscape of course development and control of the curriculum. Each academic field will supply its experts to help create the courses in that field. Consortiums of academic experts, educational technologists, and businesses will work to develop, update, refine and improve these courses. As a society, we will be able to realize tremendous efficiencies by developing these top-quality courses one time only. We will also realize a tremendous improvement in course quality control. All students will be able to select from a wide range of top-quality courses in any subject that interests them.
Second, the fiction of local control of education will become evident and a panel of education experts, rather than local groups of well-meaning, but uninformed parents, will develop the curriculum. There will be no point of local school boards arguing over which courses should or should not be offered, when every imaginable expert-built course is available. A central body will assume control over the curriculum represented by the online courses.
Third, the advance of technology, in particular live videoconferencing, will lead to the creation of a centralized pool of tutors for various subjects. Just as today’s companies have centralized phone centers where customers can call in for service, we will see the creation of one-on-one tutoring services provided via live videoconferencing. Having trouble with some calculus problems? Just connect to the calculus tutoring center for a face-to-face session with an expert tutor. These learning service centers will provide students across the world, no matter what community they live in, with access to the best coaches available.
Conclusion
The primary driver of change in our 21st century education system will be the creation of online courses that will remove the responsibilities for teaching academic subjects from teachers. Instead, teachers and schools will focus on combating the increasing social isolation that our society will face. Schools will become activity centers where students will work in groups on real-world projects, go on trips, and participate in the community. While students may also use schools as locations to engage in online course work, this course work will be just as available at home. The advent of online courses and associated networking technology will also lead to a centralization of course and curriculum development.
The computer will allow the creation of "learn by doing" courses designed by the best and the brightest experts in any given field. Quality universities will put their names on these courses, and companies will create them, guaranteeing employment to those who pass them. This will create tremendous change for everyone involved in the education system.
Teachers’ new role
The teaching of traditional academic subjects, first in high school and later in elementary school, will be increasingly done via online courses. Eventually school libraries will contain hundreds of these courses. Teachers will be left to provide things that technology cannot: personal one-on-one tutoring; teaching kids how to work in a group to accomplish something; and teaching crucial interpersonal relationship skills.
Initially teachers may feel disenfranchised by this. But an important opportunity will emerge for teaching social skills that students desperately need, and teachers will understand they need to be the ones to fill this role. Today there is a push to measure teachers by their students’ test scores. Tomorrow, teachers will be judged by more meaningful measures as we begin to value them for their human qualities.
Not only will teachers act much more as social workers or guidance counselors in the future, they will also lead courses that explicitly focus on developing social and interpersonal skills. The teacher will be an advisor to the team, or a guide on an expedition. Right now teachers are authority figures. Once teachers move out of that role, they will eliminate a roadblock that prevents them from connecting with the students who need the most guidance.
Primary education
One of the biggest problems we have in elementary school is the amount of time kids are forced to sit still. Sitting still is so hard, and it’s the last thing young children want to do. I’d rather see kids spending more time playing than doing academics. While I think there is a valuable lesson in teaching a seven-year-old to sit down and focus on a task, that task shouldn’t be doing 1,400 multiplication tables.
Elementary school should be simply about reading, writing and arithmetic, about acquiring good work habits, and perhaps most importantly, about instilling a love of learning in each child. A lot of what in today’s school system is considered extracurricular, like putting out a school paper, ought to be the curriculum. Students learn more that way than any other way.
Schools and their new role
We are moving in a direction where everybody is staring at a computer or a television all day and all night and not interacting with other people in a meaningful way. I think the schools will have to be the counterbalance to this trend, to actively provide opportunities for social interaction and to teach the skills required for successful interaction with other individuals. Part of the job of the school must be to help students learn how to work together and to be a functional part of society.
The school itself will evolve into a sort of student or community center, where kids are engaged in a variety of activities and projects. There will be a tremendous range of activities, but they will not be as purely academic as they currently are. When students are not participating in these activities, they will be taking online courses at home, or if the supervision there doesn’t allow it, at school.
Schools will become much more connected to the community around them as activities bring students more and more into contact with their community. They will also become more connected to local businesses, as students have the opportunity to engage in real-world jobs with local employers. The school will become the center of the community in a much deeper way than it currently is.
Curriculum centralization and instructional development
The advent of ubiquitous networking technology will lead to the centralization of key functions in the education system, just as it has in the business world.
First, the delivery of education via online courses will change the entire landscape of course development and control of the curriculum. Each academic field will supply its experts to help create the courses in that field. Consortiums of academic experts, educational technologists, and businesses will work to develop, update, refine and improve these courses. As a society, we will be able to realize tremendous efficiencies by developing these top-quality courses one time only. We will also realize a tremendous improvement in course quality control. All students will be able to select from a wide range of top-quality courses in any subject that interests them.
Second, the fiction of local control of education will become evident and a panel of education experts, rather than local groups of well-meaning, but uninformed parents, will develop the curriculum. There will be no point of local school boards arguing over which courses should or should not be offered, when every imaginable expert-built course is available. A central body will assume control over the curriculum represented by the online courses.
Third, the advance of technology, in particular live videoconferencing, will lead to the creation of a centralized pool of tutors for various subjects. Just as today’s companies have centralized phone centers where customers can call in for service, we will see the creation of one-on-one tutoring services provided via live videoconferencing. Having trouble with some calculus problems? Just connect to the calculus tutoring center for a face-to-face session with an expert tutor. These learning service centers will provide students across the world, no matter what community they live in, with access to the best coaches available.
Conclusion
The primary driver of change in our 21st century education system will be the creation of online courses that will remove the responsibilities for teaching academic subjects from teachers. Instead, teachers and schools will focus on combating the increasing social isolation that our society will face. Schools will become activity centers where students will work in groups on real-world projects, go on trips, and participate in the community. While students may also use schools as locations to engage in online course work, this course work will be just as available at home. The advent of online courses and associated networking technology will also lead to a centralization of course and curriculum development.
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