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.