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.

I’m really excited to test out Wave (I’ve signed up as a beta tester), and I’m very anxious to throw down some cash for the Palm Pre if it makes it out here to Asia anytime soon. As for Windows 7, I’m just at the point where I’m completely comfortable with Vista so I don’t know that I’ll be upgrading my OS in the near future.

• Develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter.
• Take charge of professional development.
• Involve parents by creating a link between home and school.
• Find educational blogs to discover new ideas, encouragement, and educational news.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Kelly offers lots of detail about each of her suggestions so be sure to read the whole article.

• Structures for learning
• Time for learning
• Tools for learning
• Communities for learning
• Policy in support of learning

This paper should be required reading for teachers and administrators. Give it a look.

Why let students blog?  The list is infinite:  ownership of writing, connection to the world, motivation, authentic audience (not just teacher), multiple learning styles, prepare students for digital citizenship, gallery of class projects, students as teachers, parent connection,….If you would like a true list of reasons for students to blog, it wouldn’t take more that an afternoon of reading blogs to run across everything from the top 20 reasonsto winning a T-shirt  You can even hear about blogging straight from the mouth of students.  Why did my students start blogging?  I wanted them to be part of social technology outside of myspace.  I wanted them to actually see “outside of the box” outside of their town, their state, and their nation. I wanted them to take ownership in their education.  And I wanted my student from a town of less than 15,000 to see that they truly are part of this world and this world is open to them.  Any classroom can have a great journal with provoking higher order thinking questions, but that journal can’t interact with the students, it can’t ask questions, and it can’t expand students view and knowledge.