PART I: STANDARDS RELATED TO COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION
As I said last Thursday, EDIT 2000 is designed according to the standards listed by ISTE. We mainly focus on the 4Cs. Starting from today, we are going to work on the first two Cs– Communication and Collaboration.
What are the standards listed by ISTE?
According to ISTE, students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
a. Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media
b. Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats
c. Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures
d. Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems
Technology tools do provide a lot of convenience and affordances for faster communication and more collaboration opportunities. However, the key word should be “BETTER”. How do we create BETTER communication and collaboration? It is a lesson to learn. We need to be creative. We need to learn to use different ways to express our ideas and thoughts. One big issue in digital generation’s development is the visual literacy. The world is becoming more and more visual. Think about the leading social networks– Facebook, Pinterest, Picasa…Therefore, to learn how to better use all these tools to help yourself or others learn/ communicate/ collaborate better is a significant lesson!
PART II: PROJECTS
BLOGGING
Keep doing your blog posts. That is a great way to challenge yourself to use different media to express your thoughts and ideas.
20% DESIGN PROJECT
Another project we are going to work on is the 20% Design project. So far, you have learned more about 21st century learning. Is there any issue related to learning, design, and technology that you want to explore/ investigate? Choose a topic that interests you the most. Then you need to do research on it and design a product related to the topic. You are given the role of a designer– a game designer, a curriculum designer, an activity designer, a book writer, a manual writer, an illustrator. This project is expected to be an individual project. However, if your project is BIG, then a team of two people might be acceptable. Please talk with me if you want to to it with a partner.
RESOURCES ( Please DO NOT copy their ideas. Remember the Honesty policy.)
- The Partnership for 21st Century Learning provides a lot of interesting topics for you to think about.
- Florida Center for Instructional Technology also provides some examples in K-12 Education.
- Possible topics:
- Gaming in education: Fun and Danger
- social networks fever: how can teachers take advantage of it?
- Online discussion, yucks! How do I improve it?
- Personalized learning with technology
- The beauty of diversities: cross-cultural communication
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO FOR 20% DEIGN PROJECT
This is a semester-long project. To me, it’s a personalized learning process. I play the role of a facilitator, a consultant, or a listener. There are several requirements you need to do with this project.
- You need to DOCUMENT your own learning process in your blog. Every week, you need to post your progress, reflection, thoughts, difficulties, ah-ha moment related to the design project on your photo blog. You can use texts, images, or do a short video if you prefer talking!
- You will present your project at least twice. One is the final presentation for assessment, another one will be a mid-term presentation for feedback.
- You need to tweet your project with other EDIT 2000 students.
- You need to talk with me once in a while to make sure you are on the track and let me know you are doing well!
WEB 2.0TOOL PROJECT
There are so many web 2.0 tools that we can use for communication and collaboration. Find a NEW tool or App that you have never used before (Please…I don’t want to see Facebook, Pinterest, Picasa, Skype or even Pandora). Play with it for a week or so. Then you need to use the movie trailer templates in iMovie to make a trailer for the tool you chose.
This can be an individual project or a group project. It’s up to you!
Examples
FOR THURSDAY:
COULD
- Watch the video “Is School Enough?” published by PBS in Sep. 2013. The reflection will be due on Feb.11.
- Read the resources in the Teacher Boot Camp website IF YOU WANT THE BONUS POINTS. We will talk about this on Thursday.
- You will see 5 important issues in education. They are very important. Think about this: each of you is from a different background, has different interests, and different motivations for learning — a lot like the students you will teach. However, we just don’t have enough time to talk about them in detail in EDIT 2000. Therefore, I want to challenge you all to complete the “Teacher Boot Camp”.
- Choose the topic that you would like to learn more and read/ watch the materials on that page.
- Then you’ll need to complete the handout as you work through each page. Fill out one handout for each concept. You MUST TURN IN THE HARDCOPY to earn the bonus points. The worksheet doesn’t need to be typed. You can write your answers. Some students even drew on the worksheet to answer the questions before.
- Each concept is one point.
- Turn them in by Feb. 4 to ear the bonus points.
SHOULD
- Start working on your Design project and complete your first documentation– it can be what topics you are thinking about doing, why is that topic important to you…
- Find one or two new technology tool(s) and play with them.
MUST
- Work on commenting your partner’s blog post once we get their blog links.
- Read the “Horizon Report (p.3-10)”. The reflection on this article is DUE TODAY. You can find the requirements here.
- SUBMIT the form of the topics you choose for your projects.
Technology Integration in 21st Century Classrooms 