Last year, during the 2007-2008 school year, I had the pleasure of attending the year-long Powerful Learning Practice seminar, a comprehensive professional development program that presented to educators the amazing tools—blogs, wikispaces, podcasting, etc.—which will transform their classrooms into 21st century learning laboratories.
It was a powerful year, full of experimentation, discovery and risk-taking. When discussing our thoughts about 21st century learning practices, many of us talked about the time commitment to this program. Clearly, schoolteachers are forever pressed for available hours. I also was concerned about time but when applying what I had learned to my own classroom, I found that after a few tricky months of false starts, these new, profound and exciting tools not only made me more efficient with time but also re-invigorated my teaching practice. My classroom was indeed transformed — from a conventional environment of quiet learning to an interactive, thriving space open to all kinds of learning.
I urge all our teachers to begin investigating the fabulous possibilities that are within our grasp. And for those nervous about the technology, about the implications of loosening up traditional theories of education and about the time needed, I have to say only this: what you are learning now with this program will make you a more inspired, more active and more efficient teacher.
My goal for the 2008-2009 school year is to turn my classroom completely green. No papers to lose, no excuses from students about printing or flash drive problems and no overstuffed files. To that end, I have set up curriculum blogs for each of my classrooms where assignments and student responses are posted.
Come look:
Good luck to all of you.
