This sounds like something we should all consider viewing. Check it out if you get a chance.


Developing Your Personal Learning Network

Presenter: Bud HuntDate: September 30, 2009Time: 5:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. EDTAudience: Secondary Teachers, Teacher Leaders, Media Specialists

In an age of information abundance, the answers to many questions may only be a Google search away. Better yet, the people who can answer them, and who need your help, too, are available in real or semi-real time to help you and your students to solve problems. In this web seminar, we will look at how educators are creating personal learning networks for themselves and their students, making classroom connections across town and around the world using tools like Twitter, blogs, and wikis, among others. We will also think about questions like: What happens when the classroom walls are permeable and you can use digital tools to bring people and information to you? How do social media practices influence life in the classroom? Outside of the classroom? Is there still a "classroom" when everyone has a personally-constructed learning network? Participants will leave with some good starting places and suggestions for how to begin to build learning networks for themselves and for and with their students at all levels K-12.
Can't attend? Click here to access the On Demand version of Bud Hunt's Web seminar.
Bud Hunt is an instructional technologist for the St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado. Formerly, he taught high school language arts and journalism at Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado. He is a teacher-consultant with the Colorado State University Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project, a group working to improve the teaching of writing in schools via regular and meaningful professional development. Bud is a former co-editor of the New Voices column of English Journal, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. Bud is a co-founder of Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation and has served as an Online Community Leader for the New Jersey Cohort of Powerful Learning Practice, a long-term, job-embedded professional development program that immerses participants in 21st Century learning environments.

More on 21st Century Learing: Can you Feel the Power?

I found this interesting tidbit on from the National Council of Teachers of English:

Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee, February 15, 2008
Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to
Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments
Document and Site Resources


The wave is growing!!!!!!!!!!!

What's all the Twitter About??!!

Cracking Dante’s Inferno is a tough row to hoe for any high school student—but what if the reading assignment was conducted via Twitter?

The exercise “Twitter in Hell” was handed to some lucky seniors at University Laboratory High School at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, after reading the classic tome. Their mission? To write 140-character tweets describing each level in hell as if they were Dante writing to his beloved Beatrice.


Don't cha just love it!!

My most influential teacher was Mr. Sederholm. No argument about it! HANDS DOWN! What a wonderful teacher. He treated us with kindness & respect & had high expectations of us. He was a new teacher, fresh from Boston. I wish I could express his accent, which was always evident when he spoke of his hometown. Fortunately, he is still a teacher here in HISD & from time to time I e-mail him to let him know how special he is to me.

I remember that my love of reading began the day he started reading The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe to us aloud. What rich moments those were. The whole class would sit on edge for those 5 minutes of reading aloud. I've been reading ever since. That's the power of a good teacher.

Over the months that I spent in his class I know that my life changed. I was inspired. I hope I am a Mr. Sederholm to at least one person out there.

Who's your Mr. Sederholm?

Here we are in the 21st century. it's not what Buck Rogers or the Jetsons predicted it to be, but it is certainly different from the world we grew up in. So what is it exactly & what does it mean to be literate in it? What do the children we are serving now need to know and be able to do in a world that changes with the minute?

Current literature says students should be able to understand concepts, think critically, think creatively, and collaborate/communicate with diverse peers.

During the President's address to congress this week we were able to know the thoughts of America instantly through responses on facebook linked to networks like CNN. Amazing. Scarey. I don't have a facebook account because I thought it was only a social thing. I wasn't aware of it's more serious implications. This makes me afraid that I am not "in the know" enough to be an agent of change, or maybe I don't have to be on every new trend, maybe it is enough to teach the skills outlined above and let the learners do the rest. Is that enough? That's my question. What do I need to know to be successful torch bearer for 21st century learning? Suggestions?

Saturday Morning Joy: The 21st Century & Beyond & Other Things I will Conquer Today!

a free saturday! yahoo! 24 hours to step into the 21st century. create my blog, update my wiki space, visit the cia ela wiki space, read the pile of books on my bed! the possibilities are endless, but time is not. we don't have endless time to get our students into the 21st century to become fierce competitors. gotta go. time is running out!