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June 21, 2007

How do we know all that stuff???

One of the questions that I always get is how do you know about all of that stuff? I confess, I'm a hopeless geek who watches all TV and movies on my computer and syncs my podcasts as the first thing I do every morning.

Okay, so how do real people do this?

As I think about this, I always come back to the idea that we teachers have professed for years that we believe in "lifelong learning." Well, that's a noble goal, but with today's world we have more opportunities than ever before. Witness Ray's Personal Learning Environment. If we really are lifelong learners, then we should be building these kinds of networks for ourselves. I think the challenge for educators is to realize that we have those networks and to make them visible to our students. I also recently read Rainbows End, based on a recommendation from Mark Prensky. In this world, the personal learning environment is always accessible because the whole world is networked and searchable.

So, what happens in the classroom? It seems like we need to find a way help students think broadly and focus on a problem. One approach we've used in class is to employ a Google Jockey to model broad thinking and personal blogging to focus.

Here's the big payoff...It's way more fun to teach this way!

Posted by Pat on 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack