Week 1 Blog #2 Learning 2.0 21st Century classrooms

            I agree with many of the videos on 21st century learners.  I think education is way behind in tech issues.  We have become so entrenched in “Thou Shalt Nots,” and filters, we have thrown out the baby with the bath water.  In the text Web 2.0 new tools, new schools, (2007, Solomon & Schrum) the first solutions that I have seen in print were encouraging.  One solution waged was to place Web 2.0 tools on intranets, behind district firewalls.  A Wiki alternative is Socialtext (www.socialtext.com) and TWiki (www.twiki.org). Class Blogmeister (http://classblogmeister.com) is a great manageable blog site for classrooms, and Elgg (www.elgg.org) offers blogging, social networking, and e-portfolios.

            Our district recently unlocked YouTube for schools above elementary.  However, as a teacher, YouTube is unlocked for my use.  This is a step in the right direction. I would like to see more unblocking, but only if it is safe.  I am a firm believer in filters, etc.  I think Flickr is a great resource that I would like to see available in my school.  Students would then have access to beautiful pictures for digital projects.  But if it means we would have to change to Gallery2 (http://gallery.menalto.com) to keep kids safe, I’m all for that.  It is an open source.

            This is a podcast I found that I thought was worth watching: 3 Steps for 21^st Century Learning by Jackie Halaw.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yCB4i7GJuM&feature=fvw)

Step 1:  Transform your classroom into a creative learning space by letting students talk, build, create, and collaborate.

Step 2 Teach students the skills of competition, cooperation and collaboration.

Step 3 Introduce your students to their global peers and provide the opportunity for them to collaborate.

            I enjoyed this video by Alan November: (http://www.mobilelearninginstitute.org/21stcenturyeducation/films/film-alan-november.html).

            Some of his ideas were note-worthy.  His idea of looking at today’s learner in a different light was exceptional.  They are contributors!  When we can open our classrooms up to make the children responsible to help each other learn, they will be much better served.  I liked the ideas of having someone in the classroom be the researcher, or having a research team that looks for things on the web.  Someone could be taking notes during the day on a google doc that everyone would look at to make sure they are correct.  They could make podcasts explaining the previous week’s learning as a review.  The students would be the writers, directors, actors, perhaps even editors.  If we can open our classrooms to let the children be the teachers too, how much richer their learning would be!