My first workshop report...
Submitted by Brett Hinton on June 27, 2005 - 7:00am.
Here is my first report I sent to eSchool News as a volunteer correspondent. You can follow the different sessions (as well as my reports on the ones I was assigned - I have at least one every day) throughout the week at http://www.eschoolnews.com/cic/.
MF235 – Drive for 2005 – 100% Participation Workshop Report
Monday --- Tom March (http://ozline.com) was the presenter for this full-day session which focused on hotlists, webquests, and developing classroom portals (referred to as class-act portals) which are based on the WordPress blogging software. His presentation wasn’t a how-to class on each of those elements, though. He provided a well-laid out plan for helping encourage all teachers to really begin integrating technology into their curriculum. This plan (see http://drivefor2005.org) provides a framework for helping the “reluctant” teacher to begin making easy steps into utilizing technology in their lessons.
For those teachers who haven’t begun integrating technology into their lessons yet, they might begin by utilizing hotlists of sites with rich and relevant content. As a teacher begins to feel comfortable with hotlists, they could then move on to using web resources (such as a brief online video clip or visiting an interesting web animation/site) to cause students to stop and think about a topic or perhaps to prompt a brief discussion. The next step is utilizing a “class act” portal to begin increasing the amount of collaboration students do using technology.
Along with a class act portal, a teacher might begin using Knowledge Hunt activities or activities Tom labels as Samplers. The Knowledge Hunt and Sampler web activities are both essentially hotlists with a question or feedback component built in. The Knowledge Hunt activity asks knowledge acquisition questions, while the Sampler activity focuses on activating the students’ affective domain. The last step Tom suggests for teachers to jump into technology integration is to being utilizing webquests in class.
The nice element to this session was that, in addition, to providing a vision, plan, and useful lesson ideas for the everyday teacher, Tom has helped develop web-based software that makes creating these activities easy to do. Check out filamentality.com and web-and-flow.com for excellent web-based software that help make it easier to create hotlists, samplers, and webquests.
This workshop was well worth the day of time spent. Tom’s ideas are solidly-based in good pedagogy as well as cutting edge technology. I highly recommend visiting the following websites for more information on the Drive for 2005 and on how we can elevate the quality and quantity of technology integration in our schools.
Relevant URLs:
Tom March really was a terrific presenter. I find myself following into the rut of pushing technology without backing it with the proper pedagogical foundational. This session helped me better recognize where that foundation is and to realize that we shouldn't just be clamoring for more technology (which would be nice), but also more effective utilization of the technology we have. Don't get me wrong the web/technology isn't a panacea for all of the challenges of education, but there are some pretty great ideas out there and it's time we got on board.
Education RSS Feed