Awake & Curious

I had the good fortune to attend the November Learning conference this month in Boston. Four great days with not a lot of sleep, but some great convesations. I had the pleasure of meeting Alan November last year, and started a classroom blog on his weblog hosting site with my students( Our Blog)
It is hard to explain how profoundly blogging changed my classroom, suffice it to say I cannot imagine teaching ( after 22 years) without a blog.
Alan, who came to our district in NYC in July 2005 for 2 days of mind-blowing pd is to say the least extremely inspiring, but his message is more important than his presence.
If I read his message right, it is that the world is changing, and has changed. Students are changing and have changed( for instance 30% of all students have thier own blog which means the same kids who hate to write in classrooms across the country, go home and write in some form nightly without being forced).Not only have students changed but more importantly the way students learn has changed. In contrast to these facts the way we teach has not changed in pace with the changes in our students or the world. In some cases our teaching has not changed at all.

This was amazing to me. I always thought of myself as a good teacher, innovative, never taught the same thing the same way two years in a row. I wrote grants, created projects for classes that engaged my students on many different levels. Always attempted to give my students” authentic” experiences in and out of the classroom. But I am a bibliophile. I love books, and more importantly the process of reading. I think the process of reading changed my life. When I became a technology coordinator, I actually cried because I loved teaching with books, and felt that nothing could ever replace them. I still do not think that anything can replace books. That said, after the conference and my year blogging with my kids I am begining to see just how powerful these tools, internet, blogging, podcasts, social-bookmarking, etc… can be.

The ability of students to respond with immediacy and connectively is daunting. Never mind the piece that everyone on the web is their potential audience.( 22 years of teaching has taught me nothing if it has not taught me that kids find an authentic audience a powerful motivator)

So now I am thinking of how I will re-design my classroom to incorporate and take advantage of the power these amazing tools offer?