Becoming a 21st Century Teacher

I have always believed that computers can provide “tremendous opportunities to enhance classroom instruction” (Keengwe, 2008). I signed up to learn about technology at Walden because I wanted to enhance my teaching with the interactive application that comes with Internet learning. What I carry away from the course is a much deeper understanding of technology and its impact on the world and our students.

Most importantly, this class gave me a deeper understanding of technology and its implications on instruction. Even as we begin using technology in our classrooms, we need to take a moment to look at how technology has already reshaped the world of our students. As digital natives, our students have grown up with a world of knowledge at their fingertips. Thanks to video games and electronic toys, they think differently than us. They are used to receiving information at high speeds; they are multi-taskers who require stimulation for learning (Prensky, 2001).

Due to the ubiquity of technology, our students do not need teachers to convey knowledge to them in the traditional sense. The answer to any question is no farther than a Google search away (Richardson, 2009, p. 131). They need us to help them navigate the great quantity of information that surrounds them. Educators need to come to recognize the uniqueness in their students’ learning styles. We need reach out to them and incorporate their digital lives into our classrooms (Prensky, 2005). This means that classrooms need to be student-centered, as opposed to teacher-centered. Because knowledge is free and ever-present in our world, we need to teach kids how to synthesize that knowledge and think critically about its applications.

Thanks to the World Wide Web, knowledge has become a collaborative endeavor. Students can now create work that can be read by others around the world. With the advent of wikis, our students publish not ‘finished’ items, but products that can be “added to and refined” by people outside the classroom (Richardson, 2009). This means that not only can anyone read and grow from their ideas, but students can also become editors of the content they read on the Internet, giving them the opportunity to “converse and interact with” the information they find (Richardson, 2009). If teachers learn how to utilize these tools, our students are no longer blank slates to be filled with knowledge; they are now active participants in their learning and in their own futures.

Keengwe, J., Onchwari, G., & Wachira, P. (2008). The use of computer tools to support meaningful learning. AACE Journal, 16(1).
Prensky, M. (2001, September/October). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Prensky, M. (2005). Listen to the natives. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 8–13.
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Podcasting

Wow! The homework this week about caused me to run screaming into the woods and revert to life in the old ways.
I had to create a podcast, which is a relatively easy task. However, I of course made it more complicated than necessary. First, I recorded the podcast on iMovie, since it was the site my student showed me how to use. After spending hours perfecting the piece, listening over and over again to my horrible broadcast voice, I couldn't get the stupid thing to upload (it came out as a video file).
However, it's done. You can access my podcast through the link (I hope) but don't expect anything too amazing. (Like I said, I have a terrible broadcast voice.) Also, it came out as an M4A file, so you have to click that little box under the 'Listen Now' box to hear it.