Expectations

This post connects back to my Prezi creation.  

In Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom, Richardson (2010) quotes a former Middlebury College professor, Barbara Ganley, as stating,

 How can a teacher expect her students to blog (or use any other tool, strategy, or technique) if she doesn't use it herself, exploring the impact it has on her thinking, writing, research, and creativity?

I seem to have a theme going here...practice what you will preach.  And, when it comes to technology, practice what you will teach.  Or, perhaps use for classroom activities.  While technology does not have to be the main force behind which you live each day, if you want your students to become engaged with technology driven projects, you must show enthusiasm.  In order to display that enthusiasm, one must practice what you preach or teach.  It definitely does not have to be perfect and perhaps the technology will not only become a learning tool for the students, but, also one for you (or, me) as well. 

I did it...my Prezi.

This project definitely took me a while. The content was no big deal - it was figuring out how to best use the formatting of Prezis to best showcase the content that was challenging. I definitely need to practice a bit with the capabilities of Prezis, but I definitely understand the engaging possibilities this has for the classroom. It takes a basic presentation and adds that bit of 'glam' to it.

Five Future Trends That Will Impact the Learning Ecosystem 

Andrea Saveri, a blogger from Saveri Consulting posted on June 19, 2013 an interesting blog about five changes that will help to regenerate the education system and,

will provoke our imagination about new possibilities for teaching and learning.

The most interesting of the five was #3: Diversification of School Formats. 

The rapid onslaught of technology not only into society, but also into our schools, has brought rapid change in behavior, interactions, and dispersal of information.  That combination of change has also encouraged innovative ideas that have helped fuel the formation of new schools.  As Saveri mentions, schools will be diversified (and, I believe, currently are) to meet a variety of needs.  These needs are being met through hybrid formats, technology integrations, and more.  Future integrations could include micro schools and design/service focused schools.  If schools are meant to produce successful members of society, isn't it our job as society members to offer these diverse learning environments to meet the diverse needs of society?

Image retrieved from Amazon.com (Link here)

The author of the book in Chapter 1, The Read/Write Web makes a specific request for teacher's beginning the journey of incorporating dynamic web technologies into the classroom.  Richard states, "...be selfish about their use in their own learning practice."  This statement resonated with me for a few reasons.  The main being, this is something that would be challenging for me.  I find the Read/Write Web to be an amazing tool that is engaging  - especially to the students of today's schools.  Today, students naturally are inclined to use web tools and tend to pick up 'rules of the web' easily and well.  I, personally, have found incorporating these web tools into everyday life to be more challenging; especially when it comes to the collaborative, social networking tools.  However, I know that a lot of information and improvement tools lie within my peers' expertise and tapping into that resource would be a great assistance.  Perhaps this course will help.  :-)

Richardson, W.  (2010).  Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web tools for Classrooms. Third Edition.  Corwin.  Thousand Oaks, CA.  pp 1-11.

Indiana University's "How to Recognize Plagiarism" Certificate

I passed!  

The image below was obtained from Indiana University's 'How to Recognize Plagiarism' online module.