Ryan+Petraitis

McLuhan's Tetrad

The emerging technology that I chose this week was Twitter. Over the past year, this program has really opened my eyes about being more versatile with classroom instruction. Social networking is a tool that I want to find ways to incorporate into my instruction to help make the classroom more interactive. Twitter in many regards has taken on a life of its own. Kids use it, entertainers use it, politicians use it, and many teachers use it. By creating a classroom feed, students, teachers, and parents could all stay connected and collaborate. I could not only post assignments, but also provide helpful or entertaining links for students, ask questions and send information to parents, and generally make the learning process much more enjoyable and easier to access.

Ryan,

Have you used Twitter with your students? I was just curious because schools are so picky about teacher's using social networks with their students.

Teri

__**ONLINE LEARNING PRESENTATIONS (WEEK 4)**__ This week I had the opportunity to share a presentation with two social studies colleagues of mine and one of our high schools assistant principals. The goal of my presentation was to use Moodle as an example of how incorporating online classrooms into face to face instruction enhances the learning experience for our students. I wanted to focus on the current state of education and how that traditional model of teaching (textbook, paper, pencil) is fading. As we see in the news, many schools are moving to online learning communities and some even are going completely digital.

When we debriefed on the presentation, we all generally understood that using online learning on a regular basis fosters the use of 21st century skills that all students will need to transition into college (or the workforce). The biggest pitfall that we see in our district is that some more experienced teachers are not comfortable with technology and are refusing to use this tool in their own classroom. At this point, using online learning sites such as Moodle has only been optional for teachers, but we will be presenting a short demonstration on how to set up online classrooms and how to use them with students at our next staff meeting. I was so glad I had the opportunity to present to my colleagues and discuss the steps that we need to take to get more teachers to realize the benefits of online learning.

RYAN PETRAITIS