C4T #2

On Mrs. Denise Krebs' blog you can find many great and inspiring posts about her love for being an educator and also how she can contribute to making education (with the use of technology!) a better experience for her students.

Such example can be found in her post Researcher's Workshop in which she discusses the benefits of letting her students choose a topic to research. That's not writing a research paper but, rather giving them 3 hours to submerge themselves in a particular topic. This project is similar to Genius Hour, check it out here. Her encouragement was simply "learn now, become an expert later." which I find refreshing. This type of assignment has many benefits and a great potential for success. Mrs. Krebs also notes the enthusiam of the students as they took notes while viewing History Channel dvds, youtube videos and Learning 360 clips. If a piece of information excited a student he or she would share with their neighbor or more excitedly share with the entire class. As with any project there was a required end result and while Mrs. Krebs was 100% pleased with the experience and creativity of the research, she didn't see 100% in the quality. I'll just agree with her theory that this occured because the projects were due 3 days before summer break :)

My first post to Mrs. Krebs proved to be beneficial for me. I explained that in my experience with research papers I never "learned", I just became an "expert" long enough to write about the topic due. I think she's on to something so, I encouraged her to continue this workshop for future classrooms. While I praised her "researcher's workshop" activity with her classroom I also opened a whole new can of worms within myself concerning my opinions on technology in the classroom. I'm glad that I did this because I recieved some wonderful feedback, websites, and articles from Mrs. Krebs that really opened my eyes to technology in the classroom. We also discussed the importance of "reinventing the classroom" which inspired her to continue writing a post from October '11. Which brings me to post # 2 The Reinvention of Education.

In this post Mrs. Krebs recalls being inspired to rethink how education is done. She attended ITEC11 where guest speaker Steve Hargadon, shared 3 things with the group:
1) An important idea: You matter!
Realizing that you and technology are a collective value. You're making a difference.

2) A platform: How we connect with others
Connecting with others is important--We learn from others!

3) A framework: How we get things done
Being constrained to the stereo typical way of teaching will get the job done but, opening a world of wonders for your students with the use of technology can give them and yourself the potential for success.

My final remarks on Mrs. Kreb's blog were simply that through our blog convos and websites she offered, I recieved an abundence of guidence towards becoming a 21st century educator. I'm glad that my inquisitive mind asked questions, that led to her answers, that led me to an open mind.