David Warlick is heading to Connecticut to give our opening address next Tuesday. I heard David last Fall as I began teaching these new classes and he certainly pushed me in a certain direction. The blogging we started in our classes was very productive from a quantity standpoint (16,000 entries!!).
That is a huge amount of data and assessment for a teacher to absorb. But I really think I had a deep understanding of each of my students because of this writing (and best of all–its still there for sharing, not in the dumpster like paper assessments!). As I approach the new year I am becoming more and more focused on my “UBD” concepts and I truly have little idea of the “what” that I will be teaching as things are coming out so fast (Lulu? Weebly? Zoho?). I know exposure to these tools is a huge void I need to fill and through that exposure I hope to foster inquiry, debate, and awareness of the world.
As a music teacher the best skill I developed was making connections with experts. These tools I use in my new field of web design enable to me to connect with people I have never met. David and I communicate by email/blog/wiki on a fairly regular basis (mainly for him to fix bugs that my kids create in the classblogmeister), but I would really value 15-20 minutes of discussion with him. I find it interesting that while the quantity (like our 16,000 entries) have greatly increased we still need to improve the quality. That’s the task for this year.
I can’t wait to hear the reaction of our staff. Should be interesting….
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