I think there is great potential of connecting Geeks in what I call networks of purpose. A purpose might be fighting AIDS, hunger, or environmental problems, in a single location, or many locations. My purpose is helping inner city kids connect with tutors/mentors who help them stay in school and move to jobs and careers. Take a look at my space and you can see examples of ways Geeks can take important intermediary roles in such networks. If we teach kids in high school to take these roles, we teach them roles of leaders that they can live the rest of their lives.
Hi,
I am a student teacher from San Francisco State University. I am looking forward to getting familiar with this site because I can use all the help I can get. Coming from Brazil, my teaching experience is very different from the preparation I am receiving here, thus everything is new to me, and I will probably need a lot of support when I am on my own. I am working on a bilingual elementary school teaching credential program, and I enjoy my hours at the elementary school I am observing.
Welcome! When I was in high school, I lived in Brazil for a year on an AFS exchange program. Would love to grab a guarana with you next time I'm in SF... :) There are some good Brazilian restaurants there (well, there are Brazilian restaurants there, which means they are good since we don't have any where I live). Hope CR 2.0 is helpful to you.
That would be great! We do have two great Brazilian restaurants in SF. Thanks for the welcome! Rest assured that CR 2.0 is already helping me. I have found many resources. Tchauzinho!
Hello! I am a very experienced middle school teacher - that means 30+ years. Surprise! I am also a tech educator totally committed to 21st Century Literacy. Right now, I am teaching Literacy in Freeport, ME, and trying to convince the tech department to free up some of the wonderful Web 2.0 sites that supprt our educational goals (and our state standards). Also, I am a member of English/Language Arts Department, and have been doing that for most of the 30+ years, in addition to librarianing, coaching, advising, history teaching, sex ed, and health ed. As I said in my profile, I live in the woods, far away from broadband, so my interactivity is somewhat limited (mindlessly slow). The Classroom is one of the most exciting groups I have found, and I hope to tune more Maine teachers in via. my new membership in MaineLearns. Since we are a 1-1 state, it is time for us to shift to the new century. I know you all agree...
Hello! I'm Leslie Rush, an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming in lovely Laramie, Wyoming. I taught high school English for 12 years, and now teach English methods and work with student teachers during their residency semester. I'm so interested in incorporating web 2.0 technology in my own classroom, particularly because I think it affords all kinds of community that is difficult to build in university classes at the best of times. I've set up my class wiki, which is here: www.uwenglishmethods.pbwiki.com and I would appreciate any feedback on that. I'm looking forward to participating in some discussions, once I get a handle on the huge stack of papers that I have to provide feedback on . . .
Hi all, I'm Theo living in Otley Near Leeds in the UK.
My timeline; Art School, (6 yrs) art teaching (15 years) - at this point I became interested in this computer technology stuff - it enabled creativity for learning- even then in the mid 80's . Advisor in iCT and Art for a Local Education Authority (5 Years), Directorship in a digital consultancy business (5 Years), since 1998 and to date, an independent learning technology and digital media consultant.
I am currently involved in 2 projects at the University of Hull involving developing learning designs for archive collections, data, documents, journals, audio and newsfilm footage. I believe the digitisation of our culture (s) and heritage - offers us rich assets that support deep learning - the technology (esp. Web 2.0) is the catalyst that makes it all work together. Collaboration, social networking and Creative Commons; the oil that keeps it running.
Hi Theo and welcome aboard! I just wanted to say hello and welcome you to the Classroom 2.0 community.
Sounds like you have a lot of experience not only as an educator but also in using technology to support meaningful engagement. I've been using archive.org for a while now with my students (13-15 yrs old) and really like having access to digitized versions of some resources that I used to have on VHS tapes, for example. However, archive.org is not nearly as comprehensive as I would like it to be. It's good to hear that someone is working on digitizing our heritage not just to preserve it for generations to come but also to make it easier for 21st century learners to interact with in digital and participatory environments that they are used to.
I'd love to find out more about your projects (and I'm sure many other members here would also be interested).
Joseph Thibault here. I was born and raised in the NEK of Vermont, now live in Santa Barbara, CA and travel between the two states encouraging teachers to use online tools like Moodle. I'd say I was "new" to education, but I've been a student for over 25 years. Looking forward to keeping my "student" status for the rest of my life.
I'm sure that you will make some valuable contributions to some of our discussions here on Moodle. I have abandoned Moodle a while ago and switched to building blogging communities. This was primarily because Moodle did not seem like the kind of platform that could effectively support 30 or 40 student bloggers. Has that changed? Can it be used as a blogging platform, in addition to its other features?
Have you had a chance to look at some of the Moodle-related discussions in this community? I hope you'll find some time to contribute to them.
To answer your question, Moodle is still not a blogging platform. As a course management system, I don't know if there is anything better. I've still found it possible to integrate blogging into classrooms using RSS or linking features, and the discussion forums are great for providing multiple threads of topics for student discussions.
For anyone thinking about incorporating blogging into their courses and thinking about Moodle, realize that it's blog feature is not meant to be a public endeavor (which is what makes blogs so attractive in the first place).
I have had a chance and do plan to contribute to the other Moodle-related discussions...thanks for the note!