Learning to Change!

Web 2.0 and Student Engagement

In "Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance", Kansas State University's Michael Wesch makes the argument that today's students often don't feel that the things they are learning is school are significant; they thus disengage easily.

Perhaps this is because education systems often deliver outdated stuff via outdated methods. We need to deliver curricular content & methodology that is relevant to today's learners in order to reengage them.

Teaching Web 2.0 delivers on both counts -- through Web 2.0 education, students are learning what they will need to know in order to be proficient in their future work, and learning in the way that future education & communication will most likely be delivered & implemented. Today's lifelong learner needs a level of technological proficiency that yesterday's did not.

Check out one way that Web 2.0 is being applied in order to engage and prepare students by watching this short video: Twitter in the Classroom, and try it yourself!

Bloom's Taxonomy: Web 2.0

Here's a great PDF of Bloom's Taxonomy with Web 2.0 skills aligned, from ICTeaching.

WatchKnow

New Educational video website available: WatchKnow.org

This is a wiki-style, fully searchable / contributable database of internet-available educational videos, tagged by age appropriateness.

For an introductory video, click here.

To access the site, click here.

Thanks,
Ross.

Facebook & Twitter in Education?

I'm compiling a list of ways in which people use Facebook & Twitter in education / the classroom. Please e-mail any input to thomsonro@gmail.com

Thanks!
Ross.

Blogging: Just Do It

In his blog post entitled "Just do it," Roy Tennant writes about writing. More specifically, he makes the point that the old addage of "have something to say before you start writing" may be a detrimental philosophical approach. He successfully argues two points to this effect: (1) we are all human, and thus all have something to say about the experience of being human, and (2) starting with the notion that we have to have something worthwhile to write before we start writing may well scare many into not writing at all: if our internal quality filter is on before a word hits a page, no words may ever hit the page -- insecurity may get the best of us. He suggests that people should just write: don't be sure you "have something to say," just do it. He suggests that blogging makes this easier than ever before.

He references teenage self-confidence issues in the article, reminding us of the role that high school teachers may have in the development of teen creativity and creative writing, and reminding us that blogging (and, by extension, other read/write web tools) are potentially key ways to engage these students.

Clearly, the learning of Web 2.0 skills is of benefit to the students in this way, and teachers who possess these skills -- and are willing to employ them in the classroom -- have yet another way to simultaneously foster both teen writing and teen confidence.

Information: Only as good as the source!

Michael Ridley's short article, The Reputation Engine, reminds us that, in the growing world of "social" information sources, who you know is becoming an important gateway to what you know. He asserts that a computer-based "reputation engine" which would rate these human "sources of information" (or allow users to rate each other as sources) should be maintained -- if it were to exist -- by libraries: the already-trusted source of reliable information in society.

Reputation Engine or not, this article makes me think of two things. One: libraries can and should have a key role in the public's understanding of the importance of Web 2.0, and, Two: school libraries in particular need to emphasize student learning around effective use of Web 2.0 tools, as well as keeping students mindful of the "digital reputations" they create for themselves as they go.