The Night the Power Went Out!

In an attempt to try out all the fancy tools demonstrated at last nights class this blog will become a bit artistic in nature. Please bear with me... This is excellent, a font called Trebuchet, and I thought it was only a weapon used in warfare. After last night's class I feel as though I am ready for the victory that can only come when one does battle with the enemy. What was it that the Godfather said, "take it to the mattress" I have no idea what that means but am ready to fight the technology battle and be rewarded with more interesting opportunities for student learning.



The Three C's of Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century -
Overview of January 13,

Several skirmishes occurred last night. The first hostel encounter was How to Access Wiki, establish an account, and navigate the Table of Content along the right side of the page. My first strategic success.

Once the knowledge was secured it became much easier to negotiate the different avenues offered on the home page. Clusters was a vocabulary term that once understood opened a whole new world exposing tasks, readings, and the dreaded homework.

From Wiki the discussion evolved to other types of technological communication; Blogging, Facebook, andTwitter where I learned one Tweaks not Twits . Between power outages the class was able to get online and complete some recon on eblog. One huge disadvantage is the websense software currently securing the district from unknown enemies on the world wide web.

Without electricity our 21st century learning had to resort to 18th century tools; paper and pencil in limited light. Missing from the scene were the candles by which to read. Not to dispair, our leader Dennis, was well prepared with several differentiated instructional activities inner/outer circle pair share and an interest based topic selection using dot stickers. All these activities had us moving about the class and sharing our interests and knowledge with each other.

One article of interest for the class was 16 Habits of Mind by Arthur L Costa and Bena Kallick. This has been a topic of personal interest and I am looking forward to continuing the conversation around the values.

While blogs, wikis, and tweets are part of the 21st century lingo the victory banner still lays beyond my reach and I truly appreciate the "in person" support from having my allies next to me as comrades in arms.