The Classroom 2.0

Since last fall, I have been working on my M.S. degree in Integrating Technology in the Classroom from Walden University. The course I am finishing right now was titled “Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society.”

This course has added many new tools to my belt that I can draw upon as a teacher. Two of the ones that excite me the most are wikis and podcasts. I have decided to use wikis as both teaching tools and as a means of teacher-driven professional development in my school. As a teaching tool, I am working with a fourth grade teacher (I am a K-5 computer lab teacher) and her social studies students to create a wiki about the Oregon Trail. Our students are so excited about being able to make their own web site. They have taken ownership of this project in a way that would never happen with a traditional group report. I have also begun two teacher wikis, one for teachers to share arts integration activities and one for our teachers to share Smartboard ideas and resources. I have started these two wikis with some of teachers in our school who are more comfortable with technology so that I can get my feet wet before I introduce them to the whole faculty. I want the less comfortable teachers to be able to see how the wiki works so that it is less intimidating to them. I really hope these tools take off and become valuable to my coworkers.

I plan on introducing podcasts to our school website next week as our principal changes the Principal’s Pride writing displayed in our halls. Each month, one writing from each grade level is selected as a Principal’s Pride writing. I am going to have the students read their writing for me and then I will be able to post that as a podcast on our website. I hope this example will excite the teachers in my school so that I can show them how to do this (it really is easy!) and they can have their own podcasts on their own pages. I also hope it will excite our parents and students so that they begin to see our website as a site worth visiting!

The most important thing this course has shown me is that it so important for me to teach to the students that I have, not the students that I would have had if I taught 30 years ago. Students are different now, and they learn in different ways than past students. This is due in large part to their exposure to technology and the changes in society that technology has initiated. Our class’ discussion of digital natives versus digital immigrants covered this. I also learned that today’s students will have different expectations made of them by colleges and employers. As a result, it is critical that I teach them 21st Century Skills. In order to do this, I must do as our video suggested and move farther and farther from a didactic, teacher-driven classroom to more inquiry-driven project-based classroom. As a computer lab teacher, this is very easy to do. Everything I assign my students is project-based, and I encourage students to cooperate and collaborate even on individual assignments. This increases my students’ engagement. As Tom Krucli said on our video, “Technology allows the students to really break down the classroom walls. They become responsible for their own learning and amazingly enough, they really do move beyond what you would normally expect out of the curriculum.”

Obviously, technology is continually changing and improving, therefore, I must stay abreast of these changes. I can do this by seeking out courses and professional development on emerging technologies, but there are other ways to do this as well. I can follow blogs that cover technology in school, and I can use wikis and other technologies to collaborate with other teachers as a sort of teacher-driven professional development. I can also read professional journals and follow websites devoted to technology and education. The means to keep myself updated and informed are seemingly endless.

I have set a few long-term goals for transforming my classroom environment and the environment of other classrooms in my school. One of these is that I want to motivate other teachers to incorporate more technology into their classrooms. Our school is fortunate to have decent technology (better than many) and district leadership that understands its importance. However, we do have many teachers who are either intimidated by it or who fail to see how vital it is. I want to help these teachers see just how much technology can help them reach the children they teach. I can start this with the podcasting and wiki activities that I described earlier. I hope that as the teachers see successful implementation of these new tools, the excitement will be contagious. I can lead training sessions to help them. Another goal is to use technology to increase parent involvement. Parent involvement is always desired in schools, and I think that parents are more likely to be involved when they are excited about what is going on there. Technology can help us get them involved. As our parents read our blogs, listen to our podcasts, and view our wikis, how could they not get excited?