Friday, September 4, 2009

Teaching 2.0

The need for teachers to keep learning is a topic that keeps rearing it head, and rightfully so. I firmly believe that if you are at a point in your teaching career where you think you have nothing to learn... it's time to be voted off the island.

Bill Chamberlain's last post dealt with this same issue. We are doing our students a disservice if we don't keep up with current practices and current technologies. The University of Southern Alabama, and in particular Dr John Hadley Strange, is doing it's part to send teachers out into the 'real world' armed with these tools.

Dr Strange's course deals with using technology to engage students in learning. His teaching students have direct contact with school students throughout the world through classroom blogs, while learning to use new technologies at the same time. His students learn about Twitter, iGoogle, shared calendars, and MANY other important web 2.0 tools.

The video below, is Dr Strange's introduction to his course. If we could duplicate this sort of education as in-service training for our practicing teachers, it would be a very good thing!



3 comments:

John Hadley Strange said...

Thank you!

Those of you who post to this blog have been my inspiration for what I now do.

I am more excited about my classes and what I am trying to accomplish now than I have been for many years!

Maggie Tarver said...

As a student in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class, I have found this course to be an invaluable one for my career. I came into it thinking I was going to learn about grade-book software and probably put a PowerPoint and a spreadsheet together, but I quickly found out my expectations would be greatly exceeded! I think an in-service course for current teachers modeled after Dr. Strange's class would be a wonderful idea.

John Harville said...

Hello everyone, I am a student of Dr. Strange and I must say this class has been a truly eye opener for me. I came into this class with a small Yahoo e-mail account and now I have 2 blogs, around 4 e-mail accounts and I'm blogging with 2 elementary school classes of which one is in New Zealand. This has been the most rewarding experience for me and I am certainly looking forward to take my new found skills into the classroom.