Viki’s Virtual Visions

Participating in a class about teaching 21st Century skills has been so enlightening!  Even as an online teacher, I don’t know everything I should know–I definitely have a lot to learn.  I come to the class and my mind starts spinning with all the new technology, but even in my online classes, we are seriously lacking in teaching 21st Century skills.  I do find a difference between elementary and high school students.  High school and college students may be considered “digital natives,” but I like to think of them as caught in between two eras.  For instance, I was born into the television age, and my grandchildren were born in the digital age. My son was born into the early world of electronic games; I can remember my toddler son playing Donkey Kong while sitting on my lap. We thought we were so techno-savvy!  In some respects, I suppose he is a digital native; in fact, he is an electronics technician for Best Buy, trying to get some real-world experience before entering the halls of higher education.  What’s funny to me is he knows a lot about computers, but very little about cars.  When I was his age, all boys knew how to work on cars, but cars and times have changed. Who knows; by mid-century, cars may not even be the major means of transportation. I look at the 21st Century as a new frontier, and we teachers are blazing the trail!

Viki

When I first started teaching, nearly 17 years ago, I had never heard of a rubric.  That year, it became a buzz word around school, but no new policies came down from administration, so I let the word float around me at department and faculty meetings.  When the word “rubric” would hover around my conversation, all I did was visualize a Rubik’s Cube; what in the world did that have to do with teaching and assessing, I wondered. Finally, I opted to attend a workshop about rubrics, and the light bulb blazed! 

The problem with rubrics used to be that they took so darn long to create.  However, technology and innovative teachers have helped with that by providing sites on the Internet to help teachers create, design and produce custom rubrics for every subject and grade level. All a teacher has to do is search a little on the Internet and with a bit of tweaking, a custom rubric will be available in minutes. Rubrics tell the student exactly where their assignment excelled and where it fell short of the requirements. I really like rubrics because I don’t spend any time explaining to students why they achieved a “B” instead of an “A”; the rubric takes care of that (well, most of the time).

Rubrics are definitely a wonderful means of assessment for digital immigrants to administer to digital natives.  Speaking of which, how many of you feel that you are already proficient at teaching 21st Century skills?  Here’s a rubric that will show you just how good you’re doing:

Technology and 21st Century Skills Rubric for Teachers

Have fun!

Viki Gardner

I really enjoyed exploring other teachers’ blogs and found MANY wonderful new tools to use in my quest for Web 2.0 technologies.  On some of the blogs, I did experience quite a large amount of download time, and I’m not exactly sure why.  I have one of the fastest Internet services (Verizon FiOs), so I can’t imagine how long those blogs must take for anyone with slower service.  Of course, I’m still exploring and testing the waters, so to speak, but I have to believe there must be a way to prevent such lengthy downloads. Breaking the blog up into separate pages sounds like a good way, if that’s even possible.  I suppose I’ll just have to explore and dig a little deeper.  At any rate, I commented on the following two blogs:

Learning Web 2.0 and Sharing Web 2.0 by Chris Wherley

Chris provides reviews and links to several Web 2.0 technologies; this was a real eye-opener for me!

The Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Vicki’s blog does not seem to be specific to anything except teaching.  She provides new stories about students and she also offers reviews on Web 2.0 technology.  She features a story today about a student who committed suicide on a webcam just last week.  What a horrid event!  Apparently people watched this for like 12 hours before any help was called in; by the time help arrived, it was too late.  As Vicki suggests, there should be an e-911 for such emergencies. 

I decided to take a risk and share with you a video I created for the 21st Century Skills class.  It depicts the day in the life of a teacher and it compares the traditional teacher to the online teacher. 

Well, I tried to upload it here, to no avail…the immigrant in me is really coming out today!  LOL!  Anyway, here’s a link to the video at YouTube… Enjoy!

A Day in the Life…

Viki

Hello Educators, Teachers, Instructors, Facilitators…ah, you know!

Funny, I just noticed that the first letters of the words in the title of this post form the acronym, “Roadi,” which is very appropriate, actually. The reason is because I feel as if I am on a wonderful new journey down the road to discovering literacy skills for the 21st Century! I realize we are nearly a decade into the century, but while our children are being born “digital,” we ”Baby Boomers” who were raised on Captain Kangaroo and one television per household have a whole lot of new gadgets loaded with information that continually bombard us! I stagger under the vision of what our students will eventually confront in the future working world. What kind of jobs will there be? 

I  am currently participating in an online class about 21st Century skills for our classrooms, our students and for us.  I must confess that this class has my head spinning with magical new ideas for my online classes!  Until the 21st Century class, I was perfectly happy logging in and out of my online classes each day, checking messages, answering emails, guiding discussions and grading essays. Now I’m learning about all the powerful technology applications, like YouTube, MovieMaker, Audacity, and even new Internets, such as Web 2.0. 

The read/write web will be a powerful educational force in the future! I predict students will use web resources like Googledocs to collaborate on projects and group work.  Teachers already utilize it for grading assignments.  For instance, a student uploads an essay to Googledocs; the teacher critiques and suspects plagiarism so turns it in to TurnItIn for a check.  Satisfied that it is the student’s own work, while the teacher is at Turnitin, she grades the essay and uploads the revised version back in Googledocs; the student revises it for a better grade; the teacher reviews it for a final grade, and the student leaves a comment of acknowledgement.  The most amazing part about the process is that no paper has ever touched their hands! Amazing!  And look at all the trees being saved; I love the idea! 

I mention in the title that I’m a “Digital Immigrant,” which just means that I was not born into technology; I have migrated into it as part of my journey through life. Marc Prensky claims to have coined the term ”digital native,” which means a person born into technology, or the Information Age.  Whatever label is attached, I know I have a lot of learning ahead of me as I try to prepare the way for our students to enter a brave new world. 

Viki