A Glimpse of the Future??

This is simply fascinating!!  Please share!!

Digital Portfolios and Final Presentations!

Tomorrow will be the swan song for our class!!  With that said, please be sure that your final presentations are complete, as we should start with them before lunch.  If you have any last-minute questions, please e-mail me or call me at (508) 216-0384 (Google Voice- hah!). Before them, we will explore a bit around the idea of how digital portfolios may be used to get a richer picture of student proficiency.  Please be sure you read the two articles I gave you, Digital Portfolios: A Dozen Lessons in a Dozen Years and 3 Keys for a Successful E-Portfolio Implementation.  They will give you a nice theoretical construct as to the essential questions schools must wrestle with before starting a digital portfolio program.

Also, be sure to continue to share all of your sources (links and descriptors) for your final presentation on your personal page of our class wiki.

Have a good night!

For Sunday Morning, Aug 21

Hello Williamstown cohort!!  Great to see all of you again!

Here are the links to your "Partnering" Wordles:

Karen & Jeff-  Curriculum Wordle     
                         Instruction Wordle
Patricia & Karen:  Curriculum Wordle     
                              Instruction Wordle
Rommey, Paul & Donna:  Curriculum Wordle    
                                           Instruction Wordle

For Sunday morning, please copy and paste one of the above Wordles your group created in class today into a posting that you have created in your personal blog. This posting should be your thoughts regarding the following:

Is Prensky's idea of partnering realistic? Could a teacher (particularly one faced with high-stakes testing, pressure to achieve AYP, etc.) realistically set up his/her curriculum and instruction to use this approach daily? Why or why not? What could you do as a school leader to foster the partnering approach?

Social Media- A Tool or Taboo for Educators?

Good morning, Boston!!  Consider these three video clips:

1.  An interview with New Milford, NJ High School Principal Eric Sheninger:

2.  This clip from CNN's Headline News to hear "Your Views"

3.  And what one Florida school district has decided to do with regard to social media:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Clearly there is a divide in opinion as to whether or not social media tools should be used in the classroom.  Not just in Florida, but also locally school boards are crafting policy narrowing or outright banning their use.

For a quick write in the comments below:  Should educators and students be allowed to use popular social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter as instructional tools?  Or are school committees justified in taking such action?

For Friday, June 15

For tonight, please copy and paste the Wordle you created in class today into a posting that you have created in your personal blog.  This posting should be your thoughts regarding the following:

Is Prensky's idea of partnering realistic?  Could a teacher (particularly one faced with high-stakes testing, pressure to achieve AYP, etc.) realistically set up his/her curriculum and instruction to use this approach daily?  Why or why not?  What could you do as a school leader to foster the partnering approach?

For the Boston Cohort...

Hi ladies-
For Thursday, please do the following:

1. Respond to the prompt regarding the Richarson interview two posts below.
2. Read the "Unleashing the Future"study on emerging technologies from Project Tomorrow.
3. Read chapters 2-6 (pp. 31-110) in the Prensky's Teaching Digital Natives.
4. Commit to a research topic- start to post links, data, research, etc. to your personal wiki page on our class wiki.  If you need any help or guidance, please e-mail me.
5. Work on your personal blog... add some gadgets and complete at least one post with your original thoughts.  Be sure that you post the address to our Resource Sharing Page on our class wiki so we may be able to follow each other's blogs.
6. Make sure that you have marked up chapters 2 and 3 of the Collins and Halverson text.... we will begin our next class with a text-based discussion of it.

Take care!

For the Williamstown Cohort...

It was great meeting and connecting with all of you this weekend! I hope the classes were informative and enjoyable.  I believe I have addressed a glitch that was inherent in how the comments were configured for this blog.  You should be able to post your responses to the Richardson article post below right now with no problem.

As a reminder, for the next time we meet in August:

1. Read the "Unleashing the Future"study on emerging technologies from Project Tomorrow.
2. Read chapters 2-6 (pp. 31-110) in the Prensky's Teaching Digital Natives.
3. Narrow down your research topic- start to post links, data, research, etc. to your personal wiki page on our class wiki.
4. E-mail me your topic sometime in the next two weeks.

Also, below is a decent video on the basics of creating your blog on Blogger and starting with a first post.  Good luck with this experiment in just in time learning! 

Contact me if you need help.  Take care.

For Day 2- ETI

Tech guru Will Richardson is a personal hero of mine!  Please read the interview piece, Change Agent, that I gave you in class today.  As you can quickly ascertain, Richardson is not a fan of all that goes with high stakes testing and Race to the Top.  As a sidebar, here is the presentation he gave at the TED-x NYED conference last March.  Good stuff!

In the Change Agent interview, Richardson alludes to the Collins and Halverson book that we're using for this course.  He states that 21st century education demands a "lifelong learning model" where "learning is much more fluid and much more independent, self-directed, and informal."  He further states, "that concept—that we can learn in profound new ways outside the classroom setting- poses huge challenges to traditional structures of schools, because that’s not what they were built for."

In light of this new notion of lifelong learning and the seven essential survival skills accrording to Tony Wagner, how should schools be restructured to better address them?  Think about schools at the level which you work.  What role would technology play?  Share some thoughts below!

P.S. Don't forget to read Schrum & Levin, Chapter 3- New Tools for Collaboration, Communication, & Creation

Welcome to EIT 2011!!

Welcome to the blog for the Emerging Instructional Technologies class!  I hope you will find this class to be thought-provoking and helpful to improving your practice.  I greatly look forward to partnering with all of you so we may further our learning.

I have established this blog for two key reasons- 1) So you all may have the experience to blog using one basic tool, and 2) to have an online forum we may use to communicate and reflect upon class readings, presentations, and content.

For our first class (July 9 in Williamstown, July 11 in Boston) we will have a text-based discussion on chapters 2 and 3 in the Collins and Halverson book, Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology.  So please read pages 9-48 in advance of class and I ask that you mark up the text with lines or passages that really resonated with you.

In the interim, please comment below with a quick reflection on the following prompt:
Collins and Halverson detail cogent arguments why schools MUST change to include new technologies and why they WILL NOT due to institutional resistance. Based upon these arguments, are you a technology optimist or a technology skeptic?  Or a combination of each?  Why?  Explain...