I'm taking a little time
from my day to post from sunny San Diego, CA, where I am attending the
International Society for Technology in Education Conference.
What
a wonderful place to rub elbows with teachers, administrators, EdTech
professionals, vendors, and others who believe strongly in the value of
technology for learning. The passion and urgency is palpable! From the
pre-conference events where many of these people came together on their own to
start collaborating and learning from one another before anything official
began, to the opening ceremony for all of us newbies where the MCs dressed up
like all sorts of famous duos (Batman and Robin, Capt. Kirk and Spock, Dorothy
and the Scarecrow, etc.), to the panel discussion last night led by Sir Ken
Robinson and including Marc Prensky, Peggy Johnson, and Mayim Bialik, the need
for us to continuously discuss education and "think about where we are
going, so we can determine how we are going to get there" is one thing we can all
agree on.
Today
I saw middle school students proudly share their projects. One group who live
very close to the Mexican border chose to interview people and do research
about how they or others came to the United States, legally or illegally. The
students then synthesized into a podcast that information that would bring a
tear to the eyes of many in our own Storm Lake community. I saw third grade
students who created computer programming projects using Scratch and middle
school students programming with Alice. I've seen groups of teachers from
all over the country visiting together about how best to using blogging to
increase student learning. The key, according to them is to open things up
and allow comments from outside the classroom group. I've seen how schools are
working very hard to create global connections in any way possible to make sure
that students are accessing all the information, resources, and people
available "out there" to increase their own learning. And I've seen
the value of using Google Maps in the classroom.
I
am struck over and over again at the importance of tying our use of technology
in the classroom to the National
Educational Technology Standards for students. It isn't enough to say we're
going to learn how to use, for example, Symbaloo, a program we use at SLCSD. We must go
further than that and determine what it is we really want the students to learn
and then determine what EdTech strategies, such as Symbaloo, might increase
that learning. Digital Citizenship is a hot topic. Twitter is still really big
as a way to connect with others and share resources.
Here's
a link to the conference newsletter for today:
It's
just so great to have the opportunity to bring all these things back to you. I
will be sharing more about the next few days, but for now, back to the
conference!
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