Nice Commoncraft style Video

I’m a bit of a fan of Will Richardson’s work, though I do think he’s a bit hard on teachers at times and not always recognising the good things that are happening. I guess that’s the stance you have take when you’re advocating wholesale reform of systems.

His most recent  article, Footprints in the Digital Age, is a free download from Educational Leadership and argues that in the new world self-directed learners must be adept at building and sustaining networks.

He also includes some simple tips for teachers wanting to get started in this networked world themselves.

I liked this bit especially, since we’ve been talking about digital footprints a lot, in trying to develop student understanding of the concept, and how they might begin to actively shape your online presence:

Your personal footprint—and to some extent your school’s—is most likely being written without you, thanks to the billions of us worldwide who now have our own printing presses and can publish what we want when we want to.

On the surface, that’s an unsettling thought—but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, if we are willing to embrace the moment rather than recoil from it, we may find opportunities to empower students to learn deeply and continually in ways that we could scarcely have imagined just a decade ago.

It was based around a number of tools: edublogs, delicious, wikispaces, some of my favourites in the web 2.0 world currently. It was great to see a young teacher talking passionately about these tools, and also asserting their place in the senior English and Humanities classroom, where I’ve found that some schools find this hard to maintain.

Esterman began by talking about what student centred learning was and then moved to the web 2.0 tools that enabled the HOW of a student centred approach. It was a practical session that focused on using a tool or two, on getting teachers to take that first step

It was funny when he came to talking about edublogs that he asked participants to look at two edublogs as examples, one of which was mine. I didn’t know whether to say ‘that’s me’, but I shut up and hoped that no-one would criticise it too loudly. Thankfully no-one did.

learning to change

A powerful video that was part of Sherryl’s presentation at Expanding Learning Horizons 2008.