I will be presenting at T&L‘s TechForum later this week in Orlando. It will be their first EduBloggerCon session, which will essentially be an open conversation among educators in attendance about issues related to blogging in education and other Web 2.0 applications. The session will follow a modified (and drastically compressed) unconference format where a wiki will substitute for the post-its.
Steve Hargadon has set up a Wikispaces site for EduBloggerCons (many more coming), and there is a page there for starter questions. If you have time, please re-visit this page, scan through the questions, and any of them that seem especially important, please edit the page adding an asterisk (*) to the end of that question. If there are other essential questions that occur to you, please add them in.
In Orlando, the questions will be wide open — the attendees will be in control. We are going to do what we can to share the outcomes of the conversation through the web, and perhaps even through a podcast. However, as always, this will depend on the kindness of the spirits of technology.
I have VERY much been looking forward to this event. Having listened to Connect Learning for the last few months it will be nice to be a part of the conversation, rather then just listening to it.
I didn’t really want to edit the page with this question, but I do have a question to ask….How do you suggest a school begin a web 2.0 revolution?
I feel somewhat overwhelmed with the whole thing myself! What do you start with? Training? Who trains? Any suggestions on “must reads” to get me going?
It shouldn’t be a surprise that test scores were not significantly higher in classrooms using the reading and mathematics software products than those in control classrooms. A product does not teach a student how to think or encourage higher level thinking. It takes teachers facilitating inquiry-based lessons using technology and generating a student-centered classrooms to create critical thinkers. In my fourth grade eMINTS classroom I’ve seen the results that technology paired with inquiry-based, constructivist strategies can do to raise test scores and more importantly boost thinking skills. One of my favorite quotes is ” “Give students a thought and they will learn for a day. Teach them to think and they will learn for a lifetime.” Software products cannot do that.
Dave, I posted a few astericks on the wiki. Bur I really think that there are three big questions that teachers will wnat to have answered:
1. What’s in Web 2.0 for me (the teacher)?
2. What’s in Web 2.0 for my students?
3. Do the answers to these first two questions outweigh the time and energy that it will take for me to learn how to use the tools of Web 2.0 effectively?
I know we have a slightly different perspective on the importance of standards and benchmarks. But I’d emphasize that teachers can use the tools of Web 2.0 to help prepare students for standardized tests and so much more.