Education as a Conversation

On March 1st, I had the pleasure of spending the day with Susim Munshi and Susan Switzer at their Read, Write, and Blog workshop. They have a wonderful support website using 21publish.com at http://learn2blog.21publish.com/ Excellent blog examples are included under the Blog List drop down menu – see “Learning from Reading Blogs” and “Learning from Participation in Blogs“. Also under the Blog List, are some Case Studies. These are scenerios which will be very familiar to teachers. Questions are listed below each to guide the teacher in utilizing blogs with a more constructivist approach to teaching and learning. We then got the opportunity to explore a free blogging publishing community called 21publish. Individual student blogs can be set up under a main umbrella blog like the North River School Blogs or topics for students to comment on like the Learn2Blog site.

Thanks for a wonderful day Susim and Susan.

On January 16th, I ordered the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms from Amazon. I have been anxiously waiting its arrival as I am very interested in these topics. Imagine my suprise when the author, Will Richardson, was scheduled to present at IL-TCE. I had never heard him speak before so I decided to go to his first presentation “The New Read/Write Web: Transforming the Classroom“. I loved it so much I decided to stay for his second presentation “What’s up with Wikis?” For both of these presentations, he has a website with support material at http://webloggedlinks.pbwiki.com/. As an educator who practices what he preaches, this is created using a wiki, of course. (pbwiki)

There was so much great information that I have decided to just list comments which he made which resonated with me:

1.  Education is a conversation not a monolog. (I think this is my newest favorite quote, hence the name of this blog.)

2.  Teachers will say “publish it” not “hand it in”.

3.  Just because we don’t get MySpace, it will not stop students from using it. (as a mother of 2 teenagers, this hit home)

4.  Wikipedia is a passonate community contributing to a resource.

Thanks, Will, for an enlightening day. Still waiting for my book… Guess I should of ordered it directly from you instead of Amazon!