So, after three weeks of using Edmodo, I interviewed two classes of 6th Form students (16 to 18 year olds) who have completely and immediately embraced this new form communication between us and now deliver their work via Edmodo almost exclusively. - Will Richardson
"The spread of the workforce has put a premium on tech tools that let people collaborate, learn and share info from different parts of the world," says Ross Mayfield, co-founder of business-software maker Socialtext. He cites studies that show 85% of all employees work on projects with colleagues in other offices. - Will Richardson
# Web 2.0 engaged many learners who were tentative contributors in class or who had special needs, and supported learners’ natural curiosity by enabling expression through different media and a sense of audience, providing access to further resources and the ability to gain confidence and skill in speaking and presenting. Some teachers had found that Web 2.0 technologies could encourage simultaneous, learner-directed discussions which extended beyond the lesson # The ‘anytime-anywhere’ availability of Web 2.0 can also be highly motivating, and can enhance learner autonomy and encourage extended learning through open ended tasks # Publication was felt to enhance a learner’s sense of ownership, engagement and awareness of audience. Publication online was used by some teachers as a key element in peer assessment and was found to encourage more attention to detail and improved the quality of work. - Will Richardson
I would like this space to be somewhere that allows students, teachers, and other colleagues to share classroom based resources and ideas for Google Earth. - Will Richardson
Mr. Haarsma is not the only one using video games to spark an interest in books. Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope that the games will draw children to reading. Spurred by arguments that video games also may teach a kind of digital literacy that is becoming as important as proficiency in print, libraries are hosting gaming tournaments, while schools are exploring how to incorporate video games in the classroom. In New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is supporting efforts to create a proposed public school that will use principles of game design like instant feedback and graphic imagery to promote learning. - Will Richardson
“The idea of learning through digital connections and peer collaboration enhanced by technologies driving Web 2.0. Users/Learners are empowered to search, create, and collaborate in order to fulfill intrinsic needs to learn new information.” - Will Richardson
At the same time I see a growing disconnect between what and how we are teaching students to read and where we spend our time reading. Are our classrooms changing with the times? Should we be allowing forcing students to learn to read a web-page, an e-mail, a chat? Should we force them like we force them to sit and read a book for 30 minutes of SSR a day to do the same with digital print? - Will Richardson
Her wiki started as little more than a calendar that she could easily update and show students and parents -- not much different from a regular Web page. "It was all about me," she says. Then she began posting class instructions and useful links, and she gave students a small space to write responses. The more she opened it up to students, the more she saw what they could do. By November, she had given over the wiki -- and with it, the control of learning -- almost entirely to her students. She calls the effect miraculous. - Will Richardson
This link may inspire me to start using my class wiki again. But, the problem I have with wikis is that my students can't edit a page at the same time. I've had students lose their work because their edits weren't saved. I've run into the same problem with Google Sites. It looks like Mrs. Maine has small group pages with a single editor instead of trying to have the whole class edit the same page. That's the trick. I also absolutely love how she has one page with uploaded notes on it. http://mrsmaineswiki.wikispace... - Stacy Baker
The power of the wiki, Maine says, is that it enables students to collaborate. Students working together on a project may pool their contributions instantly, even while working from separate places at different times. A student struggling with a biology concept at 10 P.M. can post a question and potentially get an answer from a peer. The wiki can hold all kinds of media, from text to photos to video. As the teacher, Maine can observe and participate in any part of the process. But, she notes, "if you're not collaborating and doing projects with a wiki, then it is not really anything special." Wiki Woman: How a Web Tool Saved My Career: A Pennsylvania teacher revitalizes her classroom with a wiki. Brain Storm: Maine and freshman Maddison discuss photosynthesis. Credit: Grace Rubenstein Students like the wiki because it helps them keep track of their class work, they enjoy working on computers, and they often feel more comfortable participating in discussions online than in class. - Will Richardson
Most people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day — often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated by email messages, credit card purchases, cell phones calls and Internet shopping is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians, who are poised to use it to control human behavior. - Will Richardson
web 2.0 technologies would facilitate the transformation from an educational model that is structured in courses, controlled by the institution using a ‘broadcasting’ model in an enclosed environment, to becoming a model adaptive to learners’ needs, owned by individuals, while using an aggregation model in a personalised open learning environment, and a fluid extension of the wider informal personal space...This resonates with the ideas of Illich, - Will Richardson
GlobalClassroom's community of professors and teachers is making education more personal, mobile and virtual for the "net generation" of students . Remember to use this with Block 3 class. - Will Richardson
Young people regard many Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking, as just another part of their social life, and they are more likely to have learnt these skills from their peers than from parents or teachers. However, these tools, used correctly, could bring huge benefits and support learning in more creative, social and participatory ways. - Will Richardson
This filtering approach is the opposite of most districts and brings up an interesting philosophical discussion: should access to information generally be considered a good thing and therefore the default status is allowing access? - Will Richardson
Students who send and receive instant messages while completing a reading assignment take longer to get through their texts but apparently still manage to understand what they’re reading, according to one of the first studies to explore how the practice affects academic learning. - Will Richardson
If you notice the blogroll on the right side of this blog has grown. In fact, it’s almost doubled. That is because we now include our thinwalls partners from St. Elisabeth’s school in Van Nuys California in one list. You are separated by several thousand kilometres, but you are one class. - Will Richardson
Although Web 2.0, with its emphasis on user-generated content, has been derided as a commercial cul-de-sac, it may prove to be a path to speedier scientific advancement. According to Adam Bly, Seed’s founder, internet-aided interdisciplinarity and globalisation, coupled with a generational shift, portend a great revolution. His optimism stems in large part from the fact that the new technologies are no mere newfangled gimmicks, but spring from a desire for timely peer review. - Will Richardson
