Future of Education

On October 19th I ran a professional development session showing exemplars of 21st Century Learning. Most exemplars of 21st century lessons are going to have a technology component to them. In order to field questions about the lessons and technologies, I had participants text me questions using poll everywhere. Here are the questions I didn’t get to answer during the session and my answers to them:

What would b easier 2 manage – a wiki or moodle?

It depends on your goal. Moodle is a course management system. It does a lot more then a wiki can. A wiki is a website that is easily edited by many users. My suggestion is to discuss this question with an Integration Coach.

Could we see rubrics from teachers in the district?

We will be working on gathering and creating rubrics this year. The goal is to share them out with staff once they are gathered.

How time consuming is having a moodle with ur students? How do u manage?

If you manage it effectively, it will take you no more time that you are currently spending assessing your students. Anytime you do something new to accomplish a curricular goal, you should let something go. When you start using Moodle begin small. Ex. Replace a traditional formative open ended short answer writing with a forum in Moodle. You now have a rich discussion instead of an individual writing what they think the teacher wants to hear.

Have you seen teachers use this in class?

I have used every one of these items in class myself and endorse them all as powerful tools for student learning.

do u need to download voice thread? Could u share how to add it to Moodle?

Voicethread is a web based tool, No download is needed. I do not have a quick tutorial on how to embed Voicethread in Moodle. I will look for one.

do u think having the kids maintain a wiki with newsletter info would work?

That is a great idea for how to use a wiki!

pros / cons of using a wiki within moodle?

Pro: Inside moodle with all of your other course assignments, easy to manage groups of students and permissions.

Cons: Not as graphically pleasing as pbworks or wikispaces, only visable to students in your class (this could be a pro depending on the purpose)

can you use moodle for peer editing?

You sure can, here is an example of how one teacher used it for peer evaluation. Contact a coach and we can show you how to use it for peer editing.

can you show me how to have my students text me questions?

The website is polleverywhere.com. I would be more than happy to give a quick overview of how to use it.

My question to leave this post, based upon this event, do cell phones have a place in school?

As I work toward the future (or catching teachers up to the present), I struggle with where to start. The day to day tasks of emails, meetings, etc… sometimes move my focus. I am now trying to refocus on the question, how do we get teachers into the 21st century. Some are already on their way. Those are the early adopters. Many are interested, they just don’t know what direction to take. Should I focus solely on these folks right now. There are enough of them to fill my days. The dilemma I run into is, what about the kids who don’t have these teachers? Is it fair? A student could luck out and get all the “21st century teachers” and live an engaged life. Another students could sit through 6 hours of lecture a day. The only engagement they would get would be lunch conversations.

My goal today is to figure out what the focus of my work is. Do I target groups? Do I fight the fight to change the entire system? Do I keep spending my time with the teachers who come to me (the good news is there are enough of these to fill the majority of my time)? Oh, my brain is already aching and I haven’t even started?

This video clip shows the amazing things we can do with technology today. If you need something a little inspirational, check it out. I have never used Skype, but I am looking forward to the day where we have the bandwidth to use it. If we all had this resource, like this video shows, less children would be left behind. 

Today I had the great experience of presenting at the Ohio eTech Conference with my wife. I have presented at conferences before, but this was special. I want to thank her and everyone who attended for making it a great experience for me.

For those of you who attended the session, I hope you enjoyed it. I appologize that we didn’t get to share more ideas for using wikis. All of the great questions guided the session in a direction I didn’t expect. All of the ideas I was going to share are on the website. If  you didn’t attend the session, the website should be a good resource for learning how to use wikis in educational settings. I will also be adding a few more resources to the site when I get back to my building Thursday.

Feel free to let me know what you thought. If you have a wiki, or go out and start one, post the address on here. I would love to see what everyone else is doing with wikis.

One thing I didn’t get to mention at the conference is I have a free 1 year upgrade for pbwiki. The first person to post their pbwiki address on this blog will get the upgrade.