I am not familiar with Alan November or his organization but came across a video of his earlier today.  In this video, Alan challenges some of the myths of integrating technology and what some research is beginning to show.

Myth #1: Technology is going to be the great equalizer of society.
In reality, technology is actually polarizing society.

Myth #2: The Internet is going to provide a diversity of opinion. We will have an input of ideas from around the world and generally have a better educated society.
In reality, people are going to the web to get their “version” of the truth.

Myth #3: Technology is going to make kids smarter.
In reality, it’s a distraction. Overall we are missing out on critical thinking.

He argues that it is not difficult to train teachers to use technology, rather the difficulty lies in encouraging educators to shift the control of learning to students.  When students are empowered to participate in global learning that adds value to their learning community, then we will see some of the shifts that he believes need to occur.  Rather than using the internet as a tool to mine information, he is encouraging the use of the internet to allow students to have meaningful global conversations that span across a variety of curricular areas.

A video well worth watching, not just for the brain stretching, but also for the casual, beautiful cinematography.  Enjoy and post your thoughts and comments….

I have been reflecting on this over the last few days and thinking about how I might begin to incorporate new technologies into my practice without being too scattered or just focussing on the next great idea.  I have always believed that if a instructional tool or strategy didn’t impact student learning (or my ability to impact student learning), then why use it.  I see that Mike Schmoker just spoke about this specific concern recently.

While thinking about this, I came across this great example of a grade 8 AP English teacher using Wikispaces to create literatue circles online.  From spending about 30 minutes going through her student’s work, it is evident that she has thoughtfully introduced, instructed and imbedded a number of  emerging instructional technologies into her instructional practice.  In her email below, I have purposefully added live links to the websites that she used but encourage readers to focus first on her Wikispaces page.

Here is her email to the National Education Association:

Free Virtual Literature Circles
From Jennifer Hunt from Tucson, Arizona:
“My students have been using a variety of free technology tools for work on their virtual literature circles. We set up our main website on Wikispaces, and the literature circle wiki can be found at wandawiki.wikispaces.com. Students not only created and collaborated on their wikis, but they used free technology tools to embed multimedia elements in their wikis, such as VoiceThread to create narrated slide shows, Wordle to create word clouds, Newspaper Clipping Generator to create simulations of newspaper clippings, the Morgue File and the Library of Congress American Memory to find copyright-free images suitable for the presentations, and EasyBib to create bibliographies and citations for the information and images not of their own creation. We had a lot of fun creating our wikis, but we also worked very hard and learned some things the hard way as we went along. We’re very proud of our published wikis and like to encourage others to visit and leave comments on the discussion pages.”

Please leave behind a comment if you have thoughts around embedding technology and thoughtful teaching.  Ok…back to washing my hands and keyboard in an attempt to ensure that others in my family don’t get this awful bug.

http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/dog-17.jpg

Blogging is hard work, but also somehow addictive…at least when one first starts.  I am finding myself scouring through my RSS feeds trying to find that extra special something that may be worth sharing.  During that journey I also found myself becoming reacquainted with my Twitter account.  While there, I added a number of new people that I would follow and also wondered who the crazy people were that were following me (go figure!)

During my tweeting (or twitting according to my wife) I came across this piece that seemed worth sharing.

Enjoy….http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/2009/10/30/top-5-cool-education-sites-by-david-kapuler/

As always, please let me know what you think.

Here is the introduction to these ‘Sheets:’

The Starter Sheets are resources for the classroom teacher. The intention of each sheet is to introduce a tool, technology or activity that could be easily adapted for use in the classroom. Each sheet is created to a template design and should have the following features:

• must be two pages
• must have pictures that illustrate process and outcomes
• process must be straight forward
• must be simple to read and understand
• must have clear benefits for the teacher in the classroom, the exemplar should be easy to adapt to a variety of classroom settings
• must have an alternative – web based or application
• must be linked to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and Sensory learning styles using VARK

These are well worth checking out especially if you have been asked the question about how Twitter might relate to teaching or exactly how does Delicous work.  The link to the sheets is:

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Starter+Sheets

I really liked these as they give a teacher a starting point for knowing how the tool relates to both teaching and learning.  Drop a comment if you found these useful or not.

Over the next few months, I hope to be able to regularly add to this blog with my own thoughts and observations about teaching and learning online as well as share any links that may be of interest to others.  In exploring what options might exist for me as a blog creator, I have added a RSS feed of one of my favourite E-Learning sites, Jane Hart’s E-Learning pick of the day.  The RSS feed to the right will pick up the last few entries from Jane’s blog and will put them here for easy access.  I have also added a link to the Community for Expertise in Educational Technology that you should all consider joining.

I am just working on summarizing the data from the September start up surveys that were distributed over the last 2 weeks.  You should all give yourselves a pat on the back as there are numerous comments thanking and recognizing all of you for the great work that you do with students and families every day.

Ok…have a great weekend.  If you are in the mood to do some reading on where global education may be heading and our part in that journey, take a look at IBM Global Education White Paper.  Thought I might also share this picture from my last hike out at by Pinchi Lake.