A Website with Great Intentions

I had the chance to visit the website entitled, Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21).  Yet, I have conflicted feelings about the P21 website.  I was not visually impressed. The font was too small and the information was not easy to identify.   Maybe because I thought that I would be able to see some cool interactive displays and activities.  Although I was excited to see a website specifically created to endorse student achievement for the purpose of competing in the 2st-century,  I was not excited to come back.

Surprisingly, this site identified two very important tools in Wisconsin.  Under the state initiatives I found that Wisconsin is a participating in the P21 program as well as the STEM program.  This gives me a better understanding of what my state has to offer as far as preparatory standards.

I do not disagree with any of the information or opinions expressed on this site.  It may be because of my limited comparisons to other websites that are proactively trying to incorporate more technology into the school systems.  I may not ever see anything wrong with this site until I am able to use it more.

So what does this all mean to me as an educator?  I believe that we will not only need to stay current on the latest technology, but we will need to collaborate with our colleagues to gain the important strategies to use this knowledge.  As teachers, we must rely on one another to gain access to those critical 21st century skills that we need to empower our students with.  We will have to rely on our community to keep us aware of the latest innovations.  No longer is the culture of school going to be the same.

Just as important, this means that my students will have and will continue to need a myriad of support coming from the community.  We as teachers reallly need to stay current on the latest employable skills that students need.  Does anyone know of any activities that promote these skills?

Blogging to Enhance Learning

I have been reading the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson.  Some of the ideas that he describes for using blogs in the classroom not only seem doable but they are very progressive.  Yet, because I am still very novice to blogging, I appreciate the ideas for getting both my class and myself comfortable.  Eventually, I can return to this book of resources and to embrace more engaging activities like allowing each of my middle school students the opportunity to create and maintain their own student weblog.  Most important, Will Richardson continually encouraged his reader to remain readers of blogs so that we can share with each other the cool ideas for using blogs in the classroom.

For a couple of years I used Class Homepage on www2.Scholastic.com.  What I realized is I can begin to introduce blogging the same way that I used my Scholastic homepage.  I can update homework information, highlight student achievement, upload forms for parents, showcase student work, and give my parents and students links to helpful websites.  This is important to me because I had a group of dedicated and tech savvy parents that appreciated the ability to communicate with me and access the resources that I had found to benefit their student.  My students were very much interested in the website, seeing their work displayed, and would often help me make updates.  Therefore, I know that my students will benefit from blogging.

Blogging is a good instructional tool because it not only fosters the read/think frontier of learning but it also forces students to remain conscious of their audience, which is now the world.  Eventually, it is my goal to allow blogging in my classroom to enhance the lessons and allow my students the opportunity to interact about content.  For my middle school students, “the relevance of student work no longer ends at the classroom door can not only be a powerful motivator but can also create a significant shift in the way we think about the assignments and work. . . (Richardson, 2010).”  Now my students will become more serious about their writing traits, revisions, and editing skills.  Who wants to look bad in public?  Ultimately, my students will grow in my writing class and be more prepared to interact with the world.

Resources

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3^rd ed.).      Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.