Teaching With Technology in APS

There is no doubt that technology has its own language.  Talk to anyone that works around computers and websites all day (like me on some days) and you may quickly feel lost and confused.  Examples of words that come up might include, but definitely aren’t limited to: web 2.0, blog, wiki, RSS, browser, podcast, etc.  You might have heard these words, and knew they had to do with technology, but that’s where your knowledge ended.  If you’re nodding your head right now I have the resource for you…It’s called Plain English.

I’ve run across their videos on YouTube a fair amount of times and have used it in many trainings as well.  All the authors have done is use a video camera, some really simple production work, and some paper and markers to help explain all these new words in “Plain English.”  All of the videos are housed on their site, which is called Commoncraft. They say it best when they describe what they do, “We make complex ideas easy to understand using short and simple videos.”

Here’s an example of what really helped set the stage at a podcast training I facilitated at the beginning of this school year:

So check these videos out.  Then next time your friends start throwing around those newfangled techie words and ideas you can actually join in the conversation instead of trying to quickly change the subject.  And please don’t try to tell me you haven’t ever done that!

Here is a video that I know you’ll enjoy. Ran across this on the TED site. The link to the site is here. I always enjoy listening to experts, like Sir Ken Robinson, who know what they’re talking about when it comes to education and how we can reform it to more effectively serve every single one of our students. I hope you appreciate his words and reflections as much as I do…

My boss showed this to me today, he found it on David Warlick’s blog, “2 Cents Worth.”

Another awesome video about today’s students…

I always enjoy browsing around the comments to the videos too. So many different perspectives. So many people blame the kids for what I judge as adult deficiencies. How long are we going to be able to use that excuse? Why do you think students would choose to be on Facebook rather than listen to their teacher during class? It’s pretty evident that some things that used to work well aren’t working in today’s classrooms with today’s kids. What changes need to be made? How can we approach this differently so more kids are successful in school and in life? How long are we going to stay with this design, approach, and belief set knowing that it’s failing so many of our kids?

And most importantly, how long can you continue to call yourself an educator (and call our schools schools) when so many of the kids aren’t learning or are not in the least bit interested in learning?

Please think about it… for the sake of your students.

Here’s the story behind the “Did You Know” and “Did You Know 2.0″ videos you might have seen already. This ran in the Rocky Mountain News on October 10, 2007. The link is here. It all started just south of Denver at Arapahoe High School. It’s a neat story that really gets you thinking about the power of technology in today’s world. Another great example of all of this being about the information and not necessarily the technology. The technology obviously played a factor in making this get as big as it has gotten.

The presentations can be found pretty much everywhere, including below!

The original “Did You Know”

And the new “Did You Know 2.0″

As I was exploring iTunes the other night I ran across a lecture given by Mitchel Resnick. He is a professor at MIT and is a huge advocate for making kindergarten an every day thing in every school in every grade. He has done a lot of research and seen that kindergarten works pretty well in general, why not take the things that are working and incorporate them into every grade? I ended up looking on YouTube to see if there were any videos about him and the work he has done. It turns out that one of his lectures is posted. It’s almost an hour long, and he had me from the beginning. Check it out and see what you think. It sure makes sense to me.

I was searching for powerful videos to incorporate into my part of the new teacher orientation I basically just tripped on this video. It has already come in handy for that presentation and a training too. I’ll use this one for a while. What kind of classroom are you creating for your students? Enjoy…

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This is David Warlick talking about classroom 2.0. Some great ideas about how we can better meet the needs of our Milennial students.