I’m currently enrolled in a master’s class from Lehigh University labeled “Supervision and Professional Development.” As part of the class we were asked to contribute a “best learning experience.” Given my enthusiasm for classroom tech, I offered the following submission:

“The best learning experience I’ve had in the last couple of years is one that not only affected me deeply but has grown to influence and, I believe, improve learning for my faculty and students is the integration of 21st century technology in the classroom and in the school generally.

As a teaching principal, I’ve used online resources over the years to great affect in the classroom. And while useful, the resources I was using were often discrete and disjointed–i.e. I would find a rubric I like here, a worksheet I like there, a study guide hither, and a classroom activity yon. The recent evolution in web 2.0 utilities, however, has changed everything.

I began immersing myself in utilities such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, wikis, NewsReaders, etc. about a year and a half or two years ago. Immediately it was apparent to me how these utilities might be useful not only in the classroom but in the school as a whole. While I had had my students dabble in these technologies previously, they quickly became central to our skills-based learning outcomes as I realized that this is the direction in which learning was moving.

In order to make sense of the exponentially increasing information out there, collaboration via these media has become essential so that I can work together to collate and process the information. And not only that–how I can communicate more effectively with students and colleagues is being revolutionized in new tools such as Google Wave. (I’m kevinblissett@googlewave.com, by the way, if you’d like to join my wave. I have plenty of invites if you need them.)

The upshot of all of this is that I’ve gotten most of my faculty and students on the technology train as well–not because I’m forcing my own interests on them, but rather because they quickly come to realize that we can learn and collaborate better via these media. I’m still learning these techologies; something new comes out every week. But I’m genuinely excited about the tools, and I’ve grown more efficient and connected as I’ve used them. I believe my faculty and students have as well.

Top 10 Tools for Learners

The current Top 10 list of tools for learners, based on contribution of 47 Learners AS AT 4 APRIL is:

1. Google Search
2. YouTube
3. Firefox
4. Twitter
   Wikipedia
5. Delicious
6. Facebook
   Gmail
   Google Reader
   Skype

Top 10 Tools for Learning Professionals

The current top 10 tools for learning professionals to use in their own professional practice for creating learning “solutions” for others and their own productivity is AS AT 4 APRIL as follows, based on the contributions of 21 learning professionals

1. Delicious
2. Twitter
3. Skype
4. Slideshare
5. Google Reader
6. Google Docs
7. Audacity
   Google Search
   Moodle
   Ning
   PowerPoint
   SnagIt

I’m currently using almost all of these tools, and I’m slowly introducing more of them to my students. Many of the tools have had a profound impact on the way I teach and keep up to date in education, and on the way my students learn and produce.

I might also add Digg to the list as I use it often to find top articles on topics of interest.

It can be a good alternative for students who need help and can

Julie Lindsay addresses this topic in her e-Learning Journeys blog. An excerpt:

I tried to explain that my class does not end when the students work out the door. The collaboration, interaction and socialisation continues. My students interact with each other, they interact with me, their teacher, via online tools of various names and varieties which could all come under the broad term of ‘social networking’. They have their own online areas, including digital portfolios, as well as community areas. They post to blogs and respond to each other. They are out there using social bookmarking, folksonomy, class wikis, creating podcasts and vodcasts and putting them online, using social imaging (flickr) and anything else I can think of to encourage motivation and excitement in their ultimate quest for learning. I do not apologise for this. I do not essentially see anything wrong with this in 21st century learning. In fact this approach has changed my whole teaching style and changed the way I interact with the students. The development of PLEs (personal learning environments) and ubiquitous and mobile computing means I now start my classes with ‘…open your blogs, refer to the class wiki…etc’ rather than ‘..take out your books and copy from the board’.

Read more.

Photo by San Diego Shooter

1. Take a look at your lengthy to-do list.
2. Organize pc files and folders.
3. Do some old-fashioned work.
4. Use your mobile unit.
5. Clean out your workspace.

As resourceful educators, it’s not hard to find things to do offline:

• Talk with a colleague.
• Work on lesson plans/units of inquiry.
• Mark assignments/assessments.
• Call some parents.
• Read one of those things used at one time in the classroom–a book.
• Teach!

Generation M students–those saturated in technological media–may appear to be multitasking geniuses as they IM, SMS, listen to their iPods, and say hi to mom all at the same time, but research is indicating that focusing on several tasks simultaneously is probably reducing the results in each of the tasks and creating “antsy” minds in need of downtime. And the issues associated with this multitasking lifestyle don’t apply solely to Gen-M’s; they are also applicable to professionals who juggle multiple tasks every day in the workplace.

A Time magazine article by Claudia Wallis speaks to this topic and reveals that true “multitasking” may be a fiction, that it instead appears to be quickly toggling on and off activities upon which we are actually focusing individually. While having many different activities going on at the same time may have some benefits, studies are showing that meaningful interactions within the family and the classroom are being deleteriously affected. Wallis cites anthropologist Elinor Ochs, director of UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families, who explains:

“We saw that when the working parent comes through the door, the other spouse and the kids are so absorbed by what they’re doing that they don’t give the arriving parent the time of day,” says Ochs. The returning parent, generally the father, was greeted only about a third of the time, usually with a perfunctory “Hi.” “About half the time the kids ignored him or didn’t stop what they were doing, multitasking and monitoring their various electronic gadgets,” she says. “We also saw how difficult it was for parents to penetrate the child’s universe. We have so many videotapes of parents actually backing away, retreating from kids who are absorbed by whatever they’re doing.”

…

Gen M’s multitasking habits have social and psychological implications as well. If you’re IMing four friends while watching That ’70s Show, it’s not the same as sitting on the couch with your buddies or your sisters and watching the show together. Or sharing a family meal across a table. Thousands of years of evolution created human physical communication–facial expressions, body language–that puts broadband to shame in its ability to convey meaning and create bonds. What happens, wonders UCLA’s Ochs, as we replace side-by-side and eye-to-eye human connections with quick, disembodied e-exchanges? Those are critical issues not just for social scientists but for parents and teachers trying to understand–and do right by–Generation M.

As a result of all of these activities constantly “requiring” attention, multitaskers seem to have difficulty focusing on one task deeply and following it to its conclusion; consequently, tasks which are completed are often done so superficially. This would seem to indicate that students, leaders, and project managers should focus intently on the task at hand, complete it, and then proceed to the next task versus taking bites out of multiple assignments over time.

Take a look at the rest of this insightful article.

Photo by Farai

Many schools are now adopting a 1:1 laptop to student ratio but not without hiccups. The benefits are numerous, and the flaws tend to center around the machines causing distractions, be it from aimless surfing, chatting, game-playing, etc. In my view, it’s nothing that a vigilant teacher cannot solve for the m0st part. And just when you get the laptops under control, another distraction will be lurking right around the corner.

In any case, whatever solutions are found now are likely to be a temporary fix, and the shrinking of laptops and rise of smartphones are going to provide the next generation of students with a wealth of new, and harder to manage, distractions.

(Come on, haven’t these distractions existed since the dawn of man? When I was young, the distractions were throwing paper airplanes, passing notes–love or otherwise–and drawing caricatures of the teacher. Isn’t this just a hi-tech version of that?)

For those of you thinking the current recession is the jarring event that will result in a revolution in learning; think again. Although a speaker at Online Educa in Berlin this past December predicted that entire training departments will be obliterated in the recession, that’s only likely to happen if the rest of the organizations these departments serve are obliterated. Otherwise, what we have learned from previous recessions is that training receives

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