I’ve almost finished reading, Leading 21st
Century Schools: Harnessing Technology, by Lynne M. Schrum and Barbara B. Levin.
What a great read, however I feel this is geared more
towards administrators. This book talks about how we have a tremendous
opportunity and responsibility to help students. It describes how to develop and lead
effective schools to meet the needs of 21st-century learners, integrate new
technology into teaching and learning, and realize measurable performance
improvement. This book touches upon all of the four “C’s” and also includes
some inspiring stories and experiences from some key educators.
Collaborate: Levin and Schrum talked about how to
incorporate technology into your daily lessons. They discuss many different
ways to collaborate with your team.
Communicate: They explain many different ways to introduce
technology into the classroom. They look at how technology and the vision of
schools have changed and how professional and related occupations will be one
of the two fastest growing major occupation groups and will add the most jobs.
Critical Thinking: Will our students have mastered the 21st
Century Skills, which include critical thinking, problem solving, creativity,
and communication before they graduate? Think about who your students are and
who are your teachers? Technology is going to influence both what and how
students learn and how we as teachers teach. This book talks about blogs,
wikis, and podcasts and that these are just some of the Web 2.0 tools that they
introduce.
Creativity: Web 2.0 and what is known as the second
generation of the internet. It’s different from Web 1.0 in many ways and one of
them being that it offers more interactive sites allowing more interaction. When
I went to elementary school I arrived at school with a pencil or two and some
text books. Now students need, web logs, web browsers, emails, avatars, and other
means of presentations. The future looks so different than when I was in
school.
We don’t know what kind of technology, inventions or major disasters will shape the lives of our students many years from now. We will look back and look at Web 2.0 and say, “what were we thinking?” I recommend reading this book!
1 comments:
Comment on Heather's post on Leading 21st Century Schools
Your post made me want to learn more about the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. It also made me curious about how the new Web can be used in the educational process. I like the interactive capability of Web 2.0 because an (almost) instant response to a digital action reinforces learning. I agree that if we want to be effective teachers, we must embrace new ways to reach our students. I think the key is to discover which new technologies are most effective and employ them.
Post a Comment