Open Offer to Edtech Specialists

I’ve noticed something about educational technology blogs: they’re mostly written and maintained by technology specialists, and not classroom teachers in the content areas.

(And please comment with links to classroom teachers’ edtech blogs if I’m wrong!)

It’s no wonder: most classroom teachers are too busy with the demands of classroom teaching to find the time or energy to learn and integrate new tools from the read-write web into their instruction.

This will surely change when the next generation of “digital native” teachers replace this generation.

In the meantime, I picture hordes of edtech specialists pulling their hair out because they have a million great ideas–but those ideas are not being implemented in the mainstream classrooms. Teachers are too busy.

SO: an offer to any frustrated (or simply expansive and collaborative) edtech specialists on the web….

I am a content area teacher: high school history and language arts. If you’re dying to see your ideas for history or language arts using the read-write web in action, contact me. I’ll be glad to talk about it.

And if you already have teachers in your school who are using 21st century tools, and want to globally collaborate with my students in Korea, again–contact me.

And please spread the word about this offer. I’m still a novice at blog-promotion.

I was just thinking how cool it would be if my Arabian Nights wiki project was done with other classrooms in other countries. Imagine: My students tell “Korean Nights” stories to partners in other countries/cultures, who then have to write those stories–and vice versa. A “Flat Earth,” globalized learning experience.

It’s probably too late this year (unless you can think of a way it’s not), but I want to try this next year.

[Update: Imagine it. Express it. Then...find it in the edtech blogging community. Ten minutes after writing this post, I read Karl Fisch's excellent Fischbowl post on global education and collaboration, and discovered there this link to ePals. From its webpage:

Connecting over 120,129 registered classrooms, 6.5 million students and educators in 191 countries for classroom-to-classroom penpal exchanges and cross-cultural learning projects in the world's largest online classroom community.]

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

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Written by Clay Burell

January 1st, 2007 at 10:10 am

Posted in digital storytelling, language arts, school reform, writing

Tagged with 1001 Flat World Tales, 1001flatworldtales, collaboration, edtech, lessons, literacy, multimedia, podcasting, teaching, web 2.0/ read-write web, wiki

7 Responses to 'Open Offer to Edtech Specialists'

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Do you have any specific history or language arts ideas in mind for collaboration? I don’t think it’s necessarily too late for this year. I might be able to get a teacher or two in one of those departments in my building to bite . . .

[Reply]

Karl Fisch

4 Jan 07 at 12:36 am
Thanks, Karl~

Seems to me that any collaborative ideas with teachers Stateside should come collaboratively, maybe fourth quarter.

If you find those teachers (in either or both disciplines) who’ll bite, I’ll bite too.

We can hook up now and start looking for a good global connections project for our students.

Can you send out feelers?

Thanks again, and keep up the great work.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

4 Jan 07 at 4:13 am
Sounds good. Do you think you could email me a brief blurb about you, your school and your classes/students to give them some context? My email would be my name (all lowercase, no spaces) at gmail.

I agree about developing it collaboratively, but if you could include any of the topics that you are “covering” the rest of this year in social studies or language arts, that might help. My folks are still pretty tied to covering the content, and if there was a common piece of content to hook them with, that might help. If not, then I’ll just pass along the other info and see what happens.

Thanks for considering this.

[Reply]

Karl Fisch

4 Jan 07 at 4:03 pm
thanks again, karl. i’m going to keep it online in case any other readers see it and want to jump in. i hope you can either copy and paste or just send the link to this post.

So to answer your questions, point by point:

1. Me: grade 9 English AND grade 9 history this year. English content parallels history content either thematically or chronologically (a humanities approach).

As an English teacher, I use writing workshop and six traits. See “Arabian Nights” wiki idea at http://burell.blogspot.com/2007/01/language-arts-unit-planning-think-aloud.html
also see the last section of this post: http://burell.blogspot.com/2007/01/open-offer-to-edtech-specialists.html

This seems to me something other schools from other countries (again, we’re in Seoul, though very English proficient) could complement, as I discuss in my post. This year, it might have to be non-synchronous (partner schools could add to our “Korean Nights” stories wiki with their own “[your culture]-ian Nights” story cycles.

Next year we could get more creative if we planned the writing process and peer editing to be scheduled in the same timeframe–my students peer editing the partner class’s and vice versa, for example…or a million other possibilities.

The English syllabus for semester 2 this year will be: Arabian Nights, stories from the Decameron, selections from Gulliver’s Travels, Candide, Animal Farm, and (I hope) the graphic novel “V for Vendetta.”

The English readings above will complement the following Modern World History 9 syllabus for sem. 2:
French Revolution
Industrial Revolution
Age of Idealogy and Imperialism
WW I/Russian Revolution
Rise of Fascism/WW II
Cold War
Security and Liberalism in the Age of Globalization and Global Terror (so to speak–the V for Vendetta would fit here as sort of an “Animal Farm” for our kids’ current and future world…)
see this post for the “French Revolution wiki” idea. I’d be glad to consider something for later in the year on different content, along the same (or different) collaborative/edtech lines:
http://burell.blogspot.com/2007/01/talk-aloud-unit-planning-how-to-wiki.html

Thanks for playing, Karl. Let’s see what happens!

[Reply]

Clay Burell

4 Jan 07 at 4:45 pm
This works. I’ll pass it along next week when we start back.

The only other thing would be if you had some info about your school - I looked briefly through your blog and didn’t see anything (but I might’ve missed it). I think it would be helpful for folks to know something about your school as well (but maybe that’s just me).

[Reply]

Karl Fisch

4 Jan 07 at 8:46 pm
Hi Again, Karl,

I hope you’re subscribed to this thread…

Two things:

1) I’m going to play with the “fishbowl” blog activity I picked up from somewhere in your universe, and wonder if you can direct me to a description of it step by step. (Right now, I’ve posted key passages from the Arabian Nights, asked a focus question about them, and told students to hit ‘comment’ and reply quickly and briefly. My questions are more brass-tacks: a) is it better to keep students from seeing other student comments first–maybe by setting the “moderate comments” option to “yes”–in order to get more thinking out of them? And b) I notice some teachers using this at your school seem to give 30 minutes and more to this activity in class. What process do they use? What have they learned by doing it, and what advice would they give a first user?)

2) I’m ambivalent about naming my school at the moment, though I don’t know why. I guess I want the freer expression that comes from not linking my thoughts to my employers’ name and reputation….Make sense? I’d be interested in your thoughts on this.

Hope you’re rested for a good ‘07.

Clay

[Reply]

Clay Burell

7 Jan 07 at 5:25 am
Here are several posts that talk about the fishbowl technique (sorry, don’t have the time at the moment to hyperlink them):

http://smithewl.blogspot.com/2006/12/this-isnt-your-ordinary-act-four.html

http://learningandlaptops.blogspot.com/2006/10/fishbowl-101.html

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/10/learning-at-speed-of-thought.html

http://annesmith9h.blogspot.com/2006/10/fahrenheit-451-live-blogging-40-68.html

http://learningandlaptops.blogspot.com/2006/12/skype-v-blogger-battle-of-fishbowl.html

Read through those and then let me know what further questions you have.

As far as revealing info about your school, that’s up to you of course. But, in general, I think that’s part of the power of all this. It’s students and teachers sharing (appropriate parts of) their lives and experiences with each other so that they can learn with and about each other. If our students our going to work together through a blog or wiki or something else, they are going to have to share some of their personal experiences and world views - and that will undoubtedly lead to school info being shared. Having said that, I don’t know your situation so you are a better judge of whether that will cause you - or your students - any difficulties.

[Reply]

Karl Fisch

7 Jan 07 at 6:58 pm