My edublog nominations – Down Under edition

This blog has been in existence for less than a year however I still am going to do my part by putting in some nominations for the Edublog awards. These awards celebrate all the great stuff educators are doing with social media. I  think there’s great stuff happening in New Zealand and Australia so I’m going to indulge in some geographic nepotism in my nominations for 2011 Edublog awards.

Best individual blog – Integrating technology Kathleen’s energy and enthusiasm for blogging is infectious. She is hands down the nicest person on the internet. and knows her stuff.

Best individual tweeter – @mgraffin  Setting up the #globalclassroom initiative makes you a star.

Best group blog – Inquire within fascinating, thought provoking  a must-read. Although not technically a downunder blog as there are people blogging from around the world, @whatedsaid’s involvement means I can give it a plug.

Best class blog -  Learning hub 3 has a cracker of a class blog and they even put up with me having a nose around their space.

Best student blog -  Jarrod’s awesome blog Jarrod blogs like a pro and he’s only year 2! Go Jarrod.

Best teacher blog -  e-learning 2011 is a must read. Krivett1 is always such a wonderful source of sound advice I consider her my virtual Associate Teacher.

Best School Administrator blog – I’m taking that to mean anyone with principals somewhere in their job title and hereby nominate Open learning spaces which deserves a wide audience.

Best educational use of video – Room 8 @ Melville  have been a long-time favourite blog of mine for their use video.  I’m sure the students I teacher next year will be learning so much from you.

Best educational wiki – Ruma Tahi wiki is amazing I especially loved their end of week wrap ups.

Best open PD / unconference / webinar series – the Educamps, I only made two but they were awesome.

Awesomeness from Steve Jobs

Transcript

And you still want to ban social media from schools?

Love this clip from the folks at Socialnomics.

Key quote for me: “US department of Education found online students out performed those receiving Face to Face instruction.” That has implications for educators regardless of the age of the students and is another reason why we need to stop talking about e-learning and just call it learning. To your students it isn’t technology if it has always been around.

Hat Tip: Shannon in Ottawa

What adults can learn from kids

I mentioned Adora in a previous post, but she deserves one in her own right. Awesome talk, needs to be compulsory viewing for all those entering teaching: you need to be open to learning from your students!

The Networked Student

Thought probably the most important message is the one at the end for teachers. Who are you encouraging connectivism in your classrooms?

The importance of collaboration…

I used this clip during form time as part of a lesson on being open to new ideas. The students really enjoyed seeing the animation clip and were easily able to apply the messages of working with others and taking time to let their ideas to develop to their school work.

From a teacher’s perspective it does make me wonder if the busy school days and terms are a good ways to organize learning. Are students connected merely by being a physical space learning together? Do we have both physical and learning spaces where serendipitous meetings of students with half and idea are able to combine to gain a new understanding? How do we make sure our students group work is effective?

Why teaching must change

I’m stuck in assignment hell right now so am resorting to linkage. However this link is an amazing primer for why teaching isn’t just about opening up students heads and shoving information in, it involves creating authentic experiences for kids and making learning relevant to them. I loved how she nailed the description of how access to information dramatically changed. But the key lesson I got out of that talk is that it is ok to let students experience failure so long as they have the opportunity to put it right.

Making math real

A fascinating talk by Conrad Wolfram teaching kids math through computer programming. Should we still be teaching manual computation?

Babies and Languages

An interesting lecture by Patricia Kuhl on the linguistic abilities of babies. There are implications for language learning in New Zealand where we start teaching second languages at the point where language acquisition skills start to decline.

What motivates us? It’s not what you might think…

Since last week’s course material focused on motivation, I thought this wonderful you tube clip by author Daniel Pink would make a good transcript. The full transcript is here and I’ve also tracked down the study mentioned in the animation.

Although this talk concentrates on motivation in the context of workplaces, I can’t help but wonder what the application for this for teaching and learning might be. I suspect that schools are no different than other organizations in that it is easy to get bogged down in the demands of day-to-day stuff that it’s easy to not take the time to ask yourself the big question: What is it you are trying to achieve here?

What is your purpose?