C4T # 3

The Ukulele Project

I left a comment on Dean Shareski's blog Ideas and Thoughts; Learning Stuff Since 1964.  In his post The Ukulele Project, he shows a video he created for a class in a very isolated school in Canada.  He created the video by asking his personal learning network to contribute video lessons about how to play the ukulele.  His PLN responded by sending in all sorts of different video lessons from cultures all around the world.  Dean talks about how important the internet is relative to our future classrooms.  He says, "Learning is conversation."  He believes our future teachers will become more "Network Administrator" than teacher, as we use the term today.

In my comment, I told him how much I enjoyed his post, and that I had learned something new from it as well.  I learned that the term "Network Administrator" may be a title future teachers may come to adhere to. He made one comment I understood, but I was interested to know exactly what he meant by it.  His comment was, "School and learning must be different."  I asked him what he meant by this, and I hope to hear back from him soon.  I would suggest anyone interested in seeing what the internet and a PLN can bring into a classroom, go to Dean's blog site.

Discovery Education

"Beyond The Textbook"

In Dean Shareski's blog "Beyond the Textbook" he provides feedback from a recent event in which 18 educators from across North America were invited to collaborate with his employer, Discovery Education, about digital textbooks.  They spent an evening and a day exploring the future of education and the role of textbooks in the classroom.  He says that they began with a couple of questions to include: What should a digital textbook look like and what is out there that you've seen that is worth talking about?  He said that Discovery was looking for some outside feedback and insight so that they might better understand the implications of such a product.  There was a consensus view on the idea that learning should be social and that teachers and students should be able to connect in order to share ideas and opinions better that ever before.  However, he also said that opinions did differ when it came to the point of how to implement the different ideas presented.  He said there were some questions regarding the ethics of merging big corporation products and public schools.  Overall, I found this post to be even better than his last, and I have added this site to my PLN.

In my comment, I told him how excited I was to hear that people are actually talking about making the text book a thing of the past.  In his post he said, "Comfort zones are the biggest impediment to education reform."  I told him that this is what worries me.  I asked him if he thought "old school" teachers who might be reaching a midway point in their careers would be willing to sacrifice their comfortable teaching methods and adapt to the new learning environment.  I said that I felt good about what our University and EDM 310 is doing in terms of professional development for teachers of the future.  I also took some time to visit the blogs of his peers, and I found a mass amount of good information, as well complementary details about their Discovery event.  I would suggest that any aspiring teacher visit this blog as well as the other blogs linked to this post.  This was a great addition to my PLN.