Thursday, June 28, 2012

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

In our Pinnacle experience today, we dealt with LoTi and Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. We really value the addition of the "create" as the top of the heirarchy. As we saw in our study of 21st century skills, providing students the opportunity to problem solve and create a product collaboratively is important to elicit those skills.

Shelley Wright, posting on the PLP Network, writes about a completely different approach to Bloom's in light of that very fact. She suggests that inverting the entire taxonomy would provide a much better experience for students. Read her post "Flipping Bloom's Taxonomy."

After reading her post, please leave a comment here. What is your reaction to her suggestion? She suggests a fairly specific project in which inverting Bloom's applies, can you think of any you might implement in your classroom? or perhaps situations in which in often would not work?

Also, please check out another interesting Twitter find for Edutechalogy. This flash app makes suggestions based on the level of Bloom's in the Cognitive and Knowledge domains.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Technology Integration

We've spent the majority of the day focusing on technology integration in a couple of different ways. Through completing center activities, hopefully you saw how the ISTE NETS and the North Carolina ITES can be easily integrated into instruction. In looking at the Technology Integration Planning Model, hopefully you began thinking about what should go into the planning process as you begin creating technology integrated lessons and activities. A huge part of ensuring success of technology integrated lessons is making sure that ISTE's Essential Conditions are met. These are the 14 conditions that ISTE says must be present in order to effectively leverage technology for learning.

Take some time to read each of the essential conditions. If your school or classroom were to be assessed on these conditions, how do you think they would rate? As you think of your response and reasons for your rating, you can use the resources linked below for inspiration:

http://electronicportfolios.com/reflect/EssenCondRubric.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/doug0077/essential-conditions
http://uniqueedtechie.blogspot.com/2008/07/essential-conditions-for-iste-nets.html
http://papertrailsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=53

You can leave your responses in a comment below, or write it as a post on your professional blog. If you write a post on your blog, please link it here in a comment.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

How strong is your PLN?

During Pinnacle training today, we focused on the concept of the PLN and the various forms that it might take for individuals from social networks to social bookmarking. We would like to continue to put that into practice with today's homework and reflection.

Below, you will find 8 articles concerning PLN's and often specifically Twitter. All of these posts were found surfing Twitter and bookmarking them for reading later. Pick at least three of the blog posts and tweet a very brief summary or comment. Make sure to add the #gcsk12 hashtag so it is easy for the rest of us to find for ourselves. Over the next few days, keep the conversation going and please use this hashtag whenever you would like to call the attention of GCS teachers (and your peers) to a tweet.

The 3 C's of Social Networking: Consumption, Creation, Creation - Brian Solis, posting to Social Media Today, shares how and why social networking is developing and the various roles people play within them.

The Power of Twitter - Matt Britland, posting to the Guardian's Teacher Blog, concerning his early skepticism of Twitter and how it won him over in the end.

Why Twitter is a Teacher's Best Tool- Liz Dwyer at Good.is writes about her own fascination with Twitter for education and its benefits compared to collaborating only with teammates.

What does your PLN Look Like? - A brief post of Thoughtful Learning with the basics of PLN.

Why PLN? Building Knowledge Networks and Learning Communities- Miss Cheska on her own blog discusses the basics of PLN.

100 Ways to Use Twitter in Education, By Degree of Difficulty - Jeff Dunn of Edudemic posts a great, comprehensive lists of tip and tricks for folks joining Twitter.

Twitter and Educational Chats - Kyle Pace discusses his own tips for new Twitter users specifically getting involved with hastag conversations and communities.

What I Wish I Knew Before I Started Twitter- Stephen Anderson on his blog, Web 2.0 Classroom, details as part of his Twitter series, all the suggestions he would make to a new twitterer.

Monday, June 25, 2012

21st Century Education

On our first day of Pinnacle, we have done a lot in an effort to lay the foundation for the rest. We happen to feel that education relies the mastery of 21st Century Skills as they exist beyond the catchphrase of the last decade. So the questions begs itself, if we know that children today are different we were while in school (nearly regardless of your age), why hasn't the educational machine changed to meet them?

 Through twitter, we collect blog posts, websites and resources as we read them. Eric Sheninger, a prominent principal in NJ wrote this blog post about his own observations after attending a session held by Gary Stager. He shares what he feels has slowed education's transition to the new century along with Father Time.

The blog CTEduonline ennumerates the characteristics they feel are needed of the 21st century teacher to meet the needs of students. What do you think? What skills do we need to develop and foster in our peers that are fundamental to reaching students "nowadays?" What has prevented us from automatically transitioning our practice as we find our audience differs from the past? Please leave a comment with your opinion.

 It isn't all doom and gloom either. There are pockets of teaching occuring all over the country be it in isolated classrooms or progressive districts. Lisa Dabbs shared this post on her blog encouraging teachers to decide to "be remarkable" starting now rather than examining the increments to reach mastery of the new world.

5 Things You Hate

In order to establish the norms that will carry with us through the Pinnacle experience, we will use Blogger to weed out suggestions. First, leave a comment to this post listing 5 things you hate to see occur in a PLC setting. Afterwards, we will get into a group to combine those into categories we will use to make norms.