Skills and Tools

Blogging * WebConferencing * Pocasting * Creating a Wiki

These skill posters and a blog titled "It's not about the tools. It's about the Skills" can be found on the Langwitches Blog: The Magic of Learning. The message conveyed in these posters is something that I think many teachers hear but don't understand at first. In Reading Class, teachers don't try to make sure that students understand everything they can about the textbook that is assigned to them. Teachers do focus on using stories in that book to teach certain skills that students need to learn to be successful in the future. In a Math Class, the teacher doesn't teach specific problems to prepare students just how to solve that open problem. A teacher uses a math problem to help students discover how to use certain skills to be able to solve other problems in the future. The Reading book and Math books are just tools the teacher uses to accomplish the goals of instructing students on specific skills to help students learn. The technology tools that a teachers chooses to use to assist in her insttuction serves to same purpose: to help students learn. We don't know all that the future will hold for these students, but we do know the skills we are teaching will be needed for whatever students encounter.

images by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Different color heads still make bugs . . .

My three year old was playing with a game tonight (Cooties). Instead of playing correctly, she was just making bugs by putting the pieces together. When she and her dad played the other night, they made sure that the heads and bodies matched (same color) as well as all bugs having the same sets of legs (shoes, skates , . . .). Tonight when she was on her own, she pulled a green head off and put it on a red body. Then she looked at me and said, "It is still a bug even if it doesn't match."

Her small comment got me thinking. We may not do things the same way but as teachers we are working towards the same goal: student learning. We use many different tools, technology-related or not. It is not about what tools we use, but it is about what we are trying to achieve. Our classes look different, our students are different, our ways of teaching are different, so the way we "build our bugs" is different, but they are still bugs (hopefully bugs that have learned something).

Helping Others

I enjoy helping others. Several people have come to me (whether they teach at the school where I work or not) for my help in the last few days, and I have loved being able to help them. That may sound like a selfish statement, but it is not meant that way. I just think that is neat that I get to help others figure things out. I enjoy "playing around" with things to figure them out (but I will look at the directions and ask for help if I can't figure out what to do).
Someone this week (from another school) contacted me with some questions to help out her family member (who is at another different school). I admitted that I was not sure how to do what she was wanting to do, but told her that I would be more than willing to see what I could find out and work with her to try to make it happen. For advice on the situation, I went to Twitter and posted a question. It is a bit funny that a response came from a person who teaches in the same school system, but at another school. After emailing and playing phone tag with the person needing the help, we finally got to talk. She was able to take the bits and pieces of information I had sent combined with the bits and pieces of information she had figured out (or gotten from someone else). Although the ending product (which you can see here) may not have been what she intended originally, she was able to create something that she is proud of and is going to enter in a contest to support her students and her program.
I guess the title of this post might should have something to do with how connections make things possible . . .

Making Connections

Launch your own SlideRocket presentation!

Notes to go along with presentation

It is all about making CONNECTIONS

When students make a connections with the books they read, their understanding, comprehension, and recall of the information increases.

Normally when I think of students make connections with stories, I focus on either a connection with the author or relating something that has happened to them to something that happens in the story (event). A teacher may be able to help students make connections with the author using blogs, websites, or even skype. Students could do some type of writing or art activity to express personal connections to stories possibly using a blog or something like webspiration.

Reading Kristin's Blog: Blogging with Afghanistan got me thinking about another type of connection that teachers can help provide for students using technology tools . . . a connection to the setting. A little background to her blog: In the past, her class read a story and posted discussion on a blog. The story was set in Afghanistan. A person who lives in Afghanistan read her blog and contacted her. He became her "friend" and offered to help out when she did the story the next year. . . it is all about making connections

A teacher could build background knowledge about the setting of a story by having students research general information about the area online, maybe look at pictures, or take a Google Earth trip. Those students would know a little more about the setting than before, but imagine how that level of knowledge would change if students could "talk" to someone actually in that area and ask questions not only about the geography/landforms but also about the culture.
The experiences of these students has the potential to greatly influence their understanding of the story.

Think about all the technology tools we have available to make it possible to make these connections to enhance student learning: skype, blogs, wikis, videos, pictures, voicethread, twitter . . .

So you don't have a friend or connection in the area of study or setting of the book . . . chances are that posting on Twitter could prove to be beneficial . . . chances are somebody knows somebody who knows somebody . . . it is all about making connections.

Global Studies involves learning so much more by making connections rather than just reading or research from a book or online.

Great post

Essential Tools for the Connected Teacher: Part 3

• "Every teacher is an expert. Twitter allows everyone to share what they know."
• Info about twitter, nings, skype, and google wave that include videos and details