What are three important things you found out about the brain and the learners we are teaching? How do you think Web 2.0 fits in?
A majority of the students we are teaching are visual learners. In order to be engaged in lessons, they need the concepts presented in a stimulating manner.
They ask themselves questions like, “How does this relate to me?” If the concepts are not relevant to their world, they cannot find meaning what we teach them.
I attended an SDE conference on DI this summer. One presenter, Lori Elliott, discussed the difference between Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. The kids we are teaching are Digital Natives! You can find more information here:
http://elliottsummersessions2010.blogspot.com/
Our students are multi-taskers. They are on Facebook, while twittering and texting at the same time. Elliott discussed how their brains actually “look” different than an adult in his forties.
What are some 21st Century skills that are relevant to your teaching? Which ones do you think are most important to equip your students for tomorrow using today's tools?
There are so many 21st century skills to choose from! Since I am teaching fourth grade in the fall, this is a great opportunity to weave 2.0 tools into the content areas. This week, I’ve watched several videos on teachertube.com to help me teach Colonial America. Even something as simple as a video is so much more engaging than a teacher lecture. I also went to Pete’s Power Point Station and searched for slideshows that had video embedded about the Thirteen Colonies. This site had interactive games for students as well. The games were relevant and related to the skills I need to teach.
I hope to have the kids blog this year while responding to literature. Last year, Sandy, Tamarah and Gail assisted third grade with a National Park Blog and the kids loved it.
Wallwisher looks like a fun way to respond to a single question, but I have to play around on it some more. Flip videos and Animoto’s are always engaging for the types of learners we’ll have this coming school year.
Spend some time exploring educational bloggers. Find at least three to add as a blog roll gadget on your blog. Adding the blog roll is worth one more point.
Still exploring this one.
I played a little too long on Flickr this week! I'd been on Flickr before, but never had the time to sit, explore and enjoy all that it offers. I enjoyed all of the tutorials and links associated with this task because I made many classroom/curriculum connections. From reading Kelly's Blog, I can see how creating a private account for my class will be most beneficial. There are many tie -ins for Wordly Wise and I know Kelly has used images to teach the vocabulary words. In fourth grade, Worldy Wise is more of an independent study, so the kids could upload images on our class account to represent a WW word. I don't think it would be too time consuming for the kids and is a higher order skill. They could use the Spell with Flickr tool to write the word to match the image. 
