Technology In Education Online

There were four sessions throughout the day. Here is a brief review of the sessions:

 Session 1 – Project Based Learning That Works - Great Ideas for You – Thematic Planning – The LEADS model (Literacy is Essential to Adolescent Development and Success ) is built around thematic, cross-curricular units.  The core reading materials, novels and expository/informational text are utilized to incorporate this cross-curricular approach.  The presenters gave an example of Project-based Learning by presenting YouTube videos showing this model in action.  Integrating curriculum through ideas – LA teacher, SS teacher, and Math teacher are thinking of ways to integrate these themes/ideas.  They pointed out that collaboration time is essential.   

Session 2 – Drop-in Time- Web 2.0 tools- They spoke of how they could be used in the classroom with students. The presenters demonstrated interesting sites:

For more information go to: http://dropintimewithweb20.wikispaces.com/

Session 3 – I presented “The Project-Based Web 2.0 Buffet! Eating It All Up! I spoke about the collaborative 6^th grade project. I’ll be posting my presentation on my website.

Session 4 – Developing and Supporting Teacher Leaders – The Academy of Teaching and Learning – http://southjerseyacademy.com/. It is run by teachers for teachers and started in 2000. 

All sessions are free. The only responsibility of the school districts are providing teachers with substitutes while attending.

There are 4 components -

1. governance committee – gets feedback from others to determine who are speakers, i.e. teacher leaders in the area then plan/organize
2. EIRC – take care of cost, meeting place, etc.
3. Quarterly meetings – meet on a specific topic – teachers drive the topics based on feedback
   1. Keynote in AM, breakout, lunch, return for big group activity, burning issues
4. Website – collaboration, professional growth

Once again a very enjoyable day at this annual conference. Thanks to all the folks at SRI – ETTC for putting this together!

I’m ending the first couple days here at the conference. It has been a very busy two days.  I ran a full-day workshop on Mondy, “Getting Started on the Moodle”.  Tuesday, I completed a half-day workshop on Joomla and just finished a presentation, “Moodle and 21st Century DETAILS: A Constructivist Approach to Teaching.”So as I reflect on the first couple of days, what are my thoughts?  Well, after completing these workshops I am more convinced that giving educators the opportunity to participate in the process is critical. My afternoon presentation on reflecting on how you need to take a more constructivist approach while using a Moodle. One interesting point came when I was discussing about the Workshop component whereby students could participate in peer evaluation and grading, following the guidelines of a rubric. One teacher emphatically stated she would never allow students to participate in grading.  The bottom line for me was her not having a level of trust in students to fairly access another students work.  Now here is the rub, why can’t teachers trust their students to be responsible and accountable? The other question is: Is there a power and control issue here?  I think, at times, it is really hard for some teachers to empower their students.  Do they see their role as commander and chief and students don’t have enough expertise to enable to handle the responsibility?  My thought here is, and it may relate or not, we don’t  teach students what is involved in the process of working in groups yet we throw students together a lot of times and expect them to handle the responsibility.   All I’d ask people to do is to reflect back on their own experiences of group work in school and ask the question: how did it work for you?  I’ve heard from educators the thing they disliked most when going back to school was having a class where the instructor would state that there would be group projects during the semester.  Inevitability, i would hear such statements as: “I wound up doing most of the work” or “Person A didn’t do anything. What happened? What went wrong?  The biggest problem is that we never teach, and perhaps because we were never taught our self, what makes up the group process. How group dynamics work. How you look at members or potential members and determine where their strengths and interests are and grouping students based on their strengths and interests.  Why do group members usually get disinterested? Usually, my experience has been due to people in the group being the controllers.  They want the project to go their way.  On the other extreme you have those that simply tune out due to feeling the group wasn’t hearing what they had to say. So how does this relate to peer review, which was the main point in begin with?  In today’s world students are going to be working collaboratively.  They will also have to know how to peer review.  So if we make the same fatal error with not teaching peer review, we are going to repeat the same errors we have made with group projects. We must step away from this thinking that my role as an educator is to hold all power and control in the classroom.  We have to open up our classrooms to be interactive, peer-review, and restructure group dynamics.