The Classroom

For Christmas I received one of those “for the teacher” desktop quote a day type calendars. You know the ones – full of inspiration, interesting facts, and funny stories about teaching. One of them had a quote from an internet article called “Top Eleven Traits of a Good Teacher” by Alan Haskvitz. If you haven’t read it I suggest you do. According to Haskvitz a Good Teacher needs to:

1. Be Unsatisfied
2. Have High Expectations
3. Create Independency
4. Be Knowledgeable
5. Use Humor
6. Be Insightful
7. Be Flexible
8. Use Diverse Methods
9. Be Unconforming
10. Be a Good Communicator.

#11 comes from educators from all over the world. I agree with what he says, I’m just wondering about everyone else? What do you think it takes to be a good teacher? What would your # 11 be?

This week I took part in a Web 2.0 focus group where teachers, administrators, consultants, and techs from around Edmonton Public were discussing how these emerging technologies were being used in the classroom.

In EPSB it seems that we’re focusing our efforts in 3 main areas – Blogging, Wiki’s, and Video Conferencing. Schools and classes from all over the district are using these ‘net based technologies to encourage, inspire, and help our students interact with people from all over the world! But one of the questions raised was – is this a fad or the future of education? How much time, effort, and money should Edmonton Public as a school district devote to these technologies?

Our Provincial government seems to think this is the future – Alberta has just spent millions creating the Supernet – a broadband network connecting all provincial services (Schools, Hospitals, and Government agencies). While this may seem fairly minor to Urban Schools – it’s a wonderful advancement for Rural areas where they couldn’t get broadband connections before. On top of that the Alberta Government has also been helping to push/fund Video Conferencing Technologies – as a way to have Albertans interact more freely, and help bring some Urban resources to Rural areas. So the government seems to think there’s a future.

But what about teachers? It’s no secret that in most classrooms technology is a dirty word. Something that is glitchy, hard to learn, and just used to entertain a class when you’ve run out of planned activities. But that’s how it was… the attitude is changing.

Universities are now teaching Web 2.0 integration in their courses, and new teachers are entering our schools with a fire and zeal to help bring the world into our classrooms. The technologies are getting cheaper, and easier to use, so that even technophobic teachers are beginning to no longer fear them. After all – how many joke e-mails do most of them send out? Blogging is no harder then e-mailing (and some blogs allow you to e-mail your posts in) after it’s all set up.

Web 2.0 – Fad or Future? I think it’s the future of education… what about you?

Welcome to the third incarnation of TheClassroom.Ca – Thoughts and Resources for Teachers. I have tried for many years to create an online environment where teachers from all over Canada and the world could get together and share ideas. I’ve tried to devlop many webpages and message boards – all of which were time consuming and difficult to manage – especially with the time constraints we all have. After blogging with my students for the last 3 years it finally hit me… if this technology is easy enough for my grade sixes to mannage and update, wouldn’t it be perfect for The Classroom?

And it is.

So welcome to The Classroom! Feel free to post a comment or two, and if you have a resource you’d like to recommend (or discourage others from using) feel free to e-mail me a review and I’ll post it for you!

Rating: A
Have you ever tried to teach children in grades K-3 Mircosoft Word? Not just keyboarding or story writing, but actually have them use Word. To do so you need the patiatice of a saint, and a BIG bottle of aspirin on hand. You could use other programs like storybook weaver and kids works to teach basic word processing skills, but this can lead to other problems: Read the rest of this entry »