Classroom 2.0 – or you live where?

Clarence Fisher
http://k12online.wm.edu/Classroom2.0.mov
Blog: http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/

Classroom 2.0 is about redefining what is happening in classrooms. The world has changed. It isn’t about people telling us how to do things. It’s about us redefining what is happening in classes. It’s about us figuring out what we need to do to help kids succeed in their future. It’s more than using new tools. It’s really about changing what is happening in classrooms, regardless of your location. It’s about us….

We have to change the way we teach. We need to look at how we are teaching. We need to look at how students can collaborate between students in their classroom, other classrooms, or students from across the world. These tools let kids exchange ideas and viewpoints so they can make connections and learn together. Information is vital as well as their collaboration with each other in the classroom. Their bias and viewpoints are important to be a good citizen as well as a good thinker.

Curriculum needs to be looked at even though we don’t have a lot of control over it. Our relationship and what is in that curriculum needs to undergo constant change, and we need to decide what is important and what kids need.

Tools are very important in a web 2.0 classrooms. A number of companies offer free tools to schools. These tools include servers to host blogs, podcasts, and videos/pictures. Without them schools would not be able to afford setting up a web 2.0 classroom.

Building relationships is also important. Students can communicate not only with themselves but also with students across the country or world.
Our attitudes about what classrooms can be needs to change. We are no longer isolated to communicating within our small social circle.

Clarence believes current technology assessments suck. They focus too much on skills and not on connections or students learning from each other. Education informatics’ is something we are currently lacking in. We need a way to track student’s activities in classrooms. Where they are going, where they are commenting, who they are reading, which blogs they keep going back to, who visits them. Once we know these ideas a little better then can we change our practices in the classroom. He feels this is the missing piece as these new classrooms emerge.

I thought this was an interesting video podcast. It focused on the broad view of web 2.0. We as educators need to take a new approach to teaching when using web 2.0 in the classroom. While curriculum cannot always be rewritten, we need to find new ways of integrating the state standards into a web 2.0 world. Web 2.0 is about building relationships and collaborating with students or net citizens all over the world. Therefore assessment of such web 2.0 work needs to be revised from the typical classroom rubrics. Grading of students work needs to be based not necessarily on how much volume they produced, but by how they interact and learn collaboratively in this new environment.