Steve Hargadon, who led this session, mentioned that the wiki associated with Classroom 2.0 hasn’t taken off as he hoped and wanted to “create an action plan for developing good repositories of lesson plans and training for the use of technology and Web 2.0 applications in the classroom.” Vicki Davis took notes: Classroom 2.0.
What do you think would make it easier for teachers to find ways to use Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom?
[tags]edubloggercon07, ebc07cr20, classroom 2.0[/tags]
Hi all,
I´m member of Classroom 2.0 and responsable for the biggest group DigiSkills at the moment.
As to your question.
I´ld like to point out, that there should be a combination in each classroom:
CMS platform for collaboration, communication and publishing
Class blog
Class wiki
Web 2.0 applications like mindmapping, e-journal, podcasting, screencasting
Additionally I focus on digital teaching methods: webquests …
Hans
For me? Having computers.
For others – a phrase comes to mind – "the tyranny of choice." I think I remember that from an article in The New Republic, but I'm guessing based on a reference from amazon.com, so bear with.
There is just SO MUCH STUFF out there. Most people don't want to wade through much and try to figure out what to use, what works best, etc. Consolidation would help, but I don't know that I see that happening; the 'net seems to have a rather sprawly nature.
Then there's the "I'm from Missouri" outlook. If this is new, how do we know it's going to work any better than what we've been doing? SO MANY ideas in education just seem to cycle through in different outfits every five years or so, that many veteran teachers have grown jaded about "new" stuff.
So: having access to computers and internet (and being confident about our ability to manage the class so that they're not playing Flash games or just gossiping via IM or something), having some kind of "hub" from which teachers could find what they needed without having to search for every little thing, and having clear rationales and examples for methods and instruction to show that they work.
Keep us posted! I wish I could have gone 🙂
Dana, in terms of a "hub," our session was focused on that very theme. We were looking for ways to make it easier for students to find content-specific materials, and Vicki Davis advocated tagging standards as the way to go.
In terms of needing computers, etc., we need to look at grants as a possibility. I'll post about it.
Thanks, Hans!
I'm fortunate enough to have computers – what I really need is some training (that won't cost me an arm and a leg to get to from Alaska, ha!) and the time.
One the largest obstacles in our school is that some teachers are excited about the new one-to-one computers and some really aren't. So when the students are in my classroom, they really get to use them a lot, and in other classrooms not at all. The inconsistency really confuses the issue.
As an elementary school teacher in Israel, my biggest obstacle is language. Many applications simply aren't set up for languages with special character sets, even those that are don't deal with the RTL configuration needed for Hebrew and Arabic. Then there is also the wealth of content out there which is inaccessible to my students simply because the don't understand the language of the content or of the UI.
I recently discovered dotSUB.com a video upload site, which provides a tool for members to transcribe and translate videos – and automatically adds the translations as subtitles. This type of site is a step in the right direction, making content accessible to all.
That is indeed a huge barrier. I suppose English-speaking teachers, like myself, take it for granted that the language of the WWW appears to be English.