Tools for an empowered 21st Century Classroom

This is the topic for a series of workshops to be held at the Wilderness School. Participants are to fill in the wallwisher stating what they wish to get out of today’s sessions. Particular interest has been shown in global competencies from this school.

Some suggested steps for empowering the 21st Century Classroom

Develop a Personal Learning Networks – It is essential that teachers should develop a personal learning network. This shculd preferably include both a group from within their schoo and an extensive one beyond. Try twitter, plurk, classroom2.0, guidetoinnovation, edNa, learncentral etc
Prepare your students – teach elements of cyber safety, digital citizenship, plaguarism, working with images etc Try lego and portrait making avatars. Build a super hero.
Read some prominent educationalists’ blogs, read some teacher, class and student blogs and get a feel for what is happening in the classroom now. eg 8 Ways Technology is Changing Education
Lurk on twitter and watch the current tweets.
Blogging – commence a personal blog or teacher blog, start a class blog and when confident give each student a blog. (21st century literacies – it’s all in blogging)
Experiment with some collaborative and interactive web2.0 tools eg wordle, wallwisher, voicethread (free educational version), skype, google applications
Setup an appropriate infrastructure:- stable and sufficient wireless network, appropriate bandwidth, consider 1:1 laptops or netbooks. Make sure the appropriate hardware is accessible eg headsets, microphones, computer access etc.