Tuesday, January 27, 2009

My Dream 21st century classroom

The model classroom I am using for starters are like the Obee TRC Classrooms. The essential parts include Promethean Board and projector, digital cameras, surround sound, document camera, teacher laptop and TECHNOLOGY PD, one to one laptops for students, Ricoh for scanning and ability to search on the web with as few restrictions as possible.
I can see content driven activities: Kids responding to blogs, participating in classroom wikis, laptop and applications seamlessly integrated into spelling practice, literature blogs, writing, problem solving.I see kids making keynotes , VoiceThreads, using Pages, imovie to share their learning. Publishing to the web gives students authentic audiences. For example Voice Thread. Voice, descriptive writing,fluency, all suddenly become so much more important.
The definition of literacy is changing. "In the age of the Read/Write Web, the explosion of information and online technologies demands a much more complex definition of what it means to be literate." "To truly take advantage of the power of the Read/Write Web , we must be literate in the ways of publishing".
The classroom of the 21st century is one of "seamless transfer of information: of collaborative, individualized learning, and of active participation by all members of class." "The code to teaching and learning that schools once held dear is disappearing, creating open-source-type classrooms in which everyone contributes to the curriculum".
In the 21st century we see teachers being 24/7 learners...connecting with other teachers online. We have an authentic audience for student work! Teaching is now a conversation. In the Read/Write web classroom, it is not essential to know what the answer is but where to find it. We can interact daily with experts. We HAVE to produce writers and be great writers ourselves. Weblogs and wikis lead to a paperless classroom. Students can display mastery in countless ways that involve the creation of digital content for large audiences. Student and teacher work is intended to be added to the conversation (the web) and potentially used to teach others.
It is important for teachers to model strategies, become content creators of blogs, wikis, podcasts,become true collaborators and think of themselves as coaches who model the skills that students need to be successful and motivate them to strive for excellence!

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