Do I have to be on twitter to be a 21st Century Educator?
Well it is your choice. The kind of learning I have had due to networking on twitter would not have been possible in any other form. Even if it happened it would have taken ages. But the method of twitter Personal Learning Network (PLN) does come with a big Registration Cost....Your Comittment and Passion to learn.
Now siting in a remote city in India Twitter seems to act as my virtual staff room. "I have to learn so much..........". That is the feeling that I get every day. So many hastags and so many conversations going on with too many resources to catch up. Recently I had been to an Apple Education Leadership Tour.
A two hours hands on work on an Apple Ipad 2 completely changed the way I looked at my learning process and the same that is happening with my students who have such devices in their hands in my class. I made interactive books, edited videos , made my own videos, podcasts and what not. There, I listened to some amazing Apple Distinguished Educators and what goes in their classrooms in their schools. After listening to them when I came back I felt all my Unit Planners should be discarded and I needed to think on all of them again.
The effect of such exposure was evident in my next IB DP Physics class itself which was structured in such a way that it would force my students to think, do and learn on their own with my role being as just showing them the way to the think in the right direction. (maybe as I am still experimenting with my new method of teaching).
I simply designed my lesson plan by making a glog , a Scoop and using an ebook.
The glog was something like this.....(full glog at
The next day the class had my scoop ....
From resources from Scoop which did not bore them as Powerpoints, I guess...they made their own CCD, in the virtual lab,learnt transfer of charge from a transfer of water in bucket simulation (in scoop). And the results were amazing. I could see and feel the students going through a journey while they were learning Charge Coupled Devices from Digital Technology and that too all on their own. I had to do very little explanation for that. I got energized further by an email from a student stating"I think you should get more of such glogs...they actually made me question myself over wat we learnt n not jst accept the class blindly! ". ..Devansh.
So now I feel I have a lot to do to implement all the same content of physics in such a manner where students need to do all the learning and thinking.
All these thoughts of mine got reinforced by a sudden entry in one of the hashtags #21clhk, today in my virtual staff room , twitter.There I stood virtually with all the participants of the 21st Century Learning Conference, sharing all their learning from the keynote speakers of the conference and the amazing resources . Amidst those resources came to know about Education Scientist Sugata Mitra (about whom I had already heard in my Apple Workshop), in details and the influence he had on so many educators.Have a look at this video......So A New Journey Has Begun Today........Self Organized Education...........
Well it is your choice. The kind of learning I have had due to networking on twitter would not have been possible in any other form. Even if it happened it would have taken ages. But the method of twitter Personal Learning Network (PLN) does come with a big Registration Cost....Your Comittment and Passion to learn.
Now siting in a remote city in India Twitter seems to act as my virtual staff room. "I have to learn so much..........". That is the feeling that I get every day. So many hastags and so many conversations going on with too many resources to catch up. Recently I had been to an Apple Education Leadership Tour.
A two hours hands on work on an Apple Ipad 2 completely changed the way I looked at my learning process and the same that is happening with my students who have such devices in their hands in my class. I made interactive books, edited videos , made my own videos, podcasts and what not. There, I listened to some amazing Apple Distinguished Educators and what goes in their classrooms in their schools. After listening to them when I came back I felt all my Unit Planners should be discarded and I needed to think on all of them again.
The effect of such exposure was evident in my next IB DP Physics class itself which was structured in such a way that it would force my students to think, do and learn on their own with my role being as just showing them the way to the think in the right direction. (maybe as I am still experimenting with my new method of teaching).
I simply designed my lesson plan by making a glog , a Scoop and using an ebook.
The glog was something like this.....(full glog at
The next day the class had my scoop ....
From resources from Scoop which did not bore them as Powerpoints, I guess...they made their own CCD, in the virtual lab,learnt transfer of charge from a transfer of water in bucket simulation (in scoop). And the results were amazing. I could see and feel the students going through a journey while they were learning Charge Coupled Devices from Digital Technology and that too all on their own. I had to do very little explanation for that. I got energized further by an email from a student stating"I think you should get more of such glogs...they actually made me question myself over wat we learnt n not jst accept the class blindly! ". ..Devansh.
So now I feel I have a lot to do to implement all the same content of physics in such a manner where students need to do all the learning and thinking.
All these thoughts of mine got reinforced by a sudden entry in one of the hashtags #21clhk, today in my virtual staff room , twitter.There I stood virtually with all the participants of the 21st Century Learning Conference, sharing all their learning from the keynote speakers of the conference and the amazing resources . Amidst those resources came to know about Education Scientist Sugata Mitra (about whom I had already heard in my Apple Workshop), in details and the influence he had on so many educators.Have a look at this video......So A New Journey Has Begun Today........Self Organized Education...........
Thanks for sharing !!!It was really amazing to know impact of technology on the learning through this post
ReplyDeleteA wonderful talk by Education Scientist Sugata Mitra had beautifully discussed that how can learning be enhanced with a combination of a learner & a trainer.As you said, we really need to reframe our unit planners.
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