What Technology Now Means To Me

Integrating 21st century skills into classroom content will help students develop the skills they need to be competitive in today’s global economy. Teachers must step away from traditional instructional practices and embrace 21st century pedagogy that encourages students to become “critical consumers of knowledge as it pertains to the Internet” (Laureate, 2008). In order to facilitate such skills as effective communication, critical thinking, and collaborative problem solving, I, as an educator, will need to examine my own pedagogy as it pertains to teaching content from a 21st century perspective.

Two months ago, I only had a rudimentary working knowledge of a few of the many technology tools available. Since then, I have actively engaged in the creation of a blog, a wiki and a podcast. Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms says that “[t]o teach these technologies effectively, educators must learn to us them effectively” (Richardson, 2009). Personally, collaborating with others on a global scale using such tools as wikis and blogs to analyze and synthesize the research of other professionals gave me the greatest depth of technological knowledge, Communicating with others using digital means allowed me to grow professionally and broaden my base for resources.

Looking to the future, I can acknowledge several areas in which I would like to expand student knowledge by adopting new pedagogy and content. The start of the next school year will bring several new changes to my classroom. One of which will be to set up a class wiki to publish student work and collaborate with other schools on a global scale. Through this process students will feel validated that their efforts are worthy of notice because “. . . the main objective of this era is building strong individuals” (Friedman, 2005). The second objective will be to create a class blog to keep parents informed of current events, share student achievement, and post relevant resources and standards being taught. Parental involvement is one of the key successes to student achievement. Achieving these goals will enable my students and their parents to become the integral part of the educational process that they are.

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry (Lewis, 1995-2009). The words of Albert Einstein were never more truer that in today’s society. To continue my quest for integrating technology into the classroom with an emphasis on 21st century skills, I will need to enhance my resource base by adding relevant sites to my RSS feeder and acting as an agent for change for others to follow (Richardson, 2009). This will mean seeking out professional development opportunities focusing on incorporating collaboration among other professionals as well as global problem solving.

References

Laureate Education, Inc., (Producer). 2008. Skills for the 21st century
[Motion Picture]. Understanding the Impact of Technology on
Education, Work, and Society. Baltimore: Author

Lewis, J.J. (1995-2009). Knowledge Quotes, Wisdom Quotes. Retrieved on
December 23, 2009 from http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_ knowledge

Friedman, T. (2005, April 3). It's a Flat World, After All. The New York
Times. Retrieved December 23, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web
Tools for Classrooms. (p. 136).Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press

Going Digital Podcast

Learning the tools to create and post a podcast was a tricky task for poor little “digital immigrant “ (Prensky, 2001) me. A great deal of my time this week was spent trying to play catch up with what most “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) can do in their sleep. It was overall a great experience and I look forward to podcasting with my students soon.



Resources
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). 2008. Digital Native vs. Digital Immigrant.[Motion picture]. Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society. Baltimore: Author

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). 2008. Today’s Students.[Motion picture]. Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society. Baltimore: Author

Prensky, Marc. (September/October, 2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1. On the Horizon. 9, 2-6