Sharing Inspiration

On my Twitter today a fellow tweep mentioned they were preparing to plan an art unit. This launched me into thinking about all the visual art resources that I have sitting on my computer in need of sharing. Many of you may already remember from my "7 things meme" my passion for art education, so I beavered away to create a new page on my wiki to inspire teachers of possible art lessons that can be viewed here. I quickly got some great feedback from my friends and hope that if you like what you see then you will post a comment here for me.

I'm also pleased to mention that my Te Reo Maori digital learning centre resource (that I blogged about earlier) was featured in a national ICT PD newsletter, so hopefully the use of this resource will become more widely known through this special promotion.

Why Bother getting Connected?

I came across this video about what this generation of 21st Century Learners needs to learn. It's message is that to prepare our students for the future in an evolving technological age we need to cater for their needs by CREATING, COMMUNICATING and COLLABORATING using technology. Watch:



But how can we get started? In a perfect world you would hope that you would let your staff watch the above, show them how to use a variety of web2 tools and they would shout "Eureka, I can see the benefits for student learning, engagement and achievement so I'm going to start today!". But alas, the world is not perfect and alot of staff members are not keen to step out of their comfort zones. What do we do with teachers that are reluctant because they don't know how to use the technology?

I haven't always been a whizz on the computer and was quite a technophobic before 2000. I started out slowly by ensuring that I was turning my classroom computers ON in the morning and committing myself to the notion that the students WOULD be using the computers. Of course my first experiences with computers in education was simply to publish the students writing but that was me using the computers not the kids. The first proper use of the students using the computer was through using digital learning centres. I have created many of these which educators can use, they are here at my wikispace. These are great for use with students from the primary/elementary sector (K -6). A digital learning centre reinforces, enriches and extends concepts taught as part of the daily programme and is a safe portal for children to access the internet. So I felt happy that they didn't have to type in any URL's that might lead them to dodgy sites if spelt incorrectly. The students could also access the wikispace from home and parents could take the opportunity to join in with homelearning. From the basic learning centres I then started creating my literacy programmes for early learners (5year olds) with a whole series of termly work called Learn to Read - they are available here.

From here I felt more confident to try different things on the computer. Using paint programmes for students to do follow-up pictures on, printing these out and adding stories, using the digital camera to document our learning and making readers of these events. Making digital stories using paint programmes, powerpoints and eventually being lead to creating blogs and wikispaces for children to use and share their learning. It all comes down to the willingness to embrace the technology and use it to make learning engaging for our students.

As technology evolves so too should our teaching pedagogy evolve to keep up to date, embracing and incorporating the technology. The benefits are numerous for our students and it is for them that we as educators need to change to engage and motivate our learners. Using web2.0 applications DOES this. If we can get teachers to start out small, to start to CREATE using technologies then they will be able to COMMUNICATE these creations with others (video, storytelling, blogs, podcasts) and ultimately this will lead to COLLABORATION (across the web with other learners in the global network).

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is an amazing American educator who has been to New Zealand many times in recent years as a Keynote presenter, she writes a blog called 21st Century Learning and just today she has written a new post on a similar theme to my own called "Why Change" which is has a very powerful message that I totally agree with. Please drop by her blog and read this post.