Get Your Brain In Gear!

2009-05-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.nz-interface.co.nz/articles.cfm?c_id=10&id=28

Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers

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We hear a lot about the 21st century learner – but what about the 21st century teacher? Andrew Churches investigates what makes them succeed.What are the characteristics we would expect to see in a successful 21st century educator? Well, we know they are student-centric, holistic, and they’re teaching about how to learn as much as teaching about the subject area. We know, too, that they must be 21st century learners as well. But highly effective teachers in today’s classrooms are more than this – much more.1. AdaptingHarnessed as we are to an assessment-focused education model, the 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on.2. Being visionaryImagination is a crucial component of the educator of today and tomorrow. They must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education? The visionary teacher can look at others’ ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class.3. CollaboratingBlogger, Wikispaces, Bebo, MSN, MySpace, Second life, Twitter, RSS – as an educator we must be able to leverage these collaborative tools to enhance and captivate our learners. We, too, must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.4. Taking risksThere’s so much to learn. How can you as an educator know all these things? You must take risks and sometimes surrender yourself to the students’ knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have them teach each other. Trust your students.5. LearningWe expect our students to be life-long learners. Teachers, must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge, as well. We must endeavour to stay current. I wonder how many people are still using their lesson and unit plans from five years ago. To be a teacher, you must learn and adapt as the horizons and landscapes change.6. CommunicatingTo have anywhere, anytime learning, the teacher must be anywhere and anytime. The 21st century teacher is fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it; they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it.7. Modelling behaviourThere is an expectation that teachers will teach values, so we must model the behaviors that we expect from our students. We are often the most consistent part of their life, seeing them more often, for longer and more reliably than even their parents. The 21st century educator also models tolerance, global awareness, and reflective practice, whether it’s the quiet, personal inspection of their teaching and learning, or through blogs, twitter and other media, effective educators look both inwards and outwards.8. LeadingWhether they are a champion of the process of ICT integration, a quiet technology coach, the 21st century educator is a leader. Like clear goals and objectives, leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project. ANDREW CHURCHES IS HOD INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AT KRISTIN SCHOOL IN AUCKLAND.

I just joined twitter

2009-02-03T16:53:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'll see you there. bauwarter

GYBIG will be at MMW on Thursday February 5

2009-02-03T16:48:00.001-08:00

Get your brain in gear!

for more technology integration. You will be asked what your goals are for the day and what are two techie things you can do well.

I want to look into a new Groliers product for student collaboration and saving. I want to revamp my music webquest for fifth grade groups to make moviemaker projects.

FACEinHOLE

2009-01-26T20:18:00.001-08:00

Create your own FACEinHOLE

Wonder Wall November 17-21

2008-11-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

Teachers will be brainstorming with their class for questions for the Library Wonder Wall

Wonder Wall

2008-11-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

I published this for the teachers here:
http://cnx.org/content/m18255/1.1/
creat your own Connections site at http://cnx.org/

http://www.faqkids.com/
http://biophile.co.za/children/what-do-children-wonder-about
http://www.stenhouse.com/pdfs/8126ch01.pdf
http://questioning.org/Q7/toolkit.html
http://questioning.org/nov04/whyquestion.html
http://questioning.org/jan05/whywonder.html
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/landing/?word=wonder&ad=mwcom.dict.txt1
http://www.oir.uiuc.edu/Did/docs/QUESTION/quest1.htm - encouraging students to think on their own
http://hsp.myweb.uga.edu/question.htm
http://www.joycevalenza.com/questions.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=408
I am starting to think about how I can encourage our teachers to work with the students in their class to create questions of things they wonder about for our Wonder Wall in the library.

Thursday, November 6

2008-11-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

We had 18 teachers meet all day and all moved forward with technology. Most popular activities were: updating webpages, Photostory, wikis, setting up blogs, using
Bighugelabs for trading cards, leearning about lexiles in Destiny and Destiny Quest.
What kind of activities would you like to focus on for our January Workshop Day? Do you want tutorials or instructions for any activities? Please comment.
Just one more thing...I just had this article by Will Richardson appear on my iGoogle page where my blog reader sends me interesting articles. This really relates to our day, today!
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/nov08/vol66/num03/Footprints_in_the_Digital_Age.aspx

November 6 Links

2008-11-03T04:42:00.000-08:00

Here is an article I found in the summer about our kids getting ahead of us with technology of the future. Read this and think about how you can use you GYBIG day to integrate technology into your classroom.
http://www.cea-ace.ca/media/en/Locked_System_Fall07.pdf

This article talk about building a personal learning network. We can do this with each other in the GYBIG group.
http://www.masscue.org/publications/oncuespring08/BuildingYourOwnPLN.pdf

Many of our librarians met Jan Radford last year when Debbie brought her around to visit our schools. She won an award and what I noticed was her personal learning network mentioned, which we belong to. She was just honored with the Australian Teacher Librarian of the Year Award for 2008. I thought you would enjoy reading the article.
http://www.asla.org.au/advocacy/award/awards08.htm
Here an article about creating a network in school. http://www.districtadministration.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=1344
Some of us have Moodle and have looked at Diigo. We have thought about creating a wiki.
I created one and will start using it soon. Anyone want to join in?
http://mmwreadingolympics.keystonespa.org/
See how one principal has his staff communicating.
http://www.districtadministration.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=1251

Do you wonder how I find these articles? I use del.icio.us and I tag them GYBIG. Then I checked my bookmarks and found the handouts for you.

November 6 GYBIG

2008-10-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

November 6: We have 20 people signed up to come to Maureen M. Welch Elementary School for our workshop.

August 12 GYBIG

2008-10-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

CR teachers met on August 12, 2008 to look at information sources for our 21st century learners and to learn about some web 2.0 tools. We set goals for integration of technology into our lesson plans and some teachers worked on their web pages, MovieMaker and PowerPoint.

We were guided by these presentations:
August 12, 2008
Get Your Brain In Gear - the future of education