Reflection on the first class

Core educational values from SLA

We're off and running!

A great group has settled in at Manchester Elementary Middle School for their first grad course, EDGR 620 via SNHU.

We covered a lot of philosophical ground to get underway…

Introduction/s by Wendy

Do, Make, Create
"Take off your teaching hat, and put on your learning hat." G. Stager

The great Seymour Papert

"Leonardo da Vinci tried to invent an airplane. If you look at his drawings, you see that he had some really good ideas—not that they would have worked. But I think that by looking at his drawings, you can see that if he had been able to experiment with those ideas, he would have seen the ways in which they didn't work and very likely would have made a successful airplane or participated in the making of the airplane in his time. However, he could not even begin that process because in order to do it, you needed a lot of technological infrastructure. You needed machine tools. You needed fuels. You needed some source of power. You needed materials. You needed a knowledge of physics."

-Seymour Papert "Child Power: Keys to the New Learning of the Digital Century 1998

www.papert.org/articles/Childpower.html

We got people logged into Google Docs for sharing and collaborating on class docs.

We set up folks as blog authors… and overcame some hurdles.

We explored Twitter and a bit of it's potential as a professional development resource, a source to 'subscribe' to topics and people who inspire you... a bit like having research assistants!

• We tried some searches in Twitter: cooking and photoshop (separately, but now I'm curious what searching for both of these together will bring up... and will try it after I finish writing here!) and got to see what came up in posts. Searching for terms you are interested in is a great way to find resources. I gave examples of how I use Twitter with students to find resources for their projects.
• We introduced how to use hashtags and one already exists for the class as #benningtonV. Posting with a hashtag is a great way to broadcast to a larger audience. Want to broadcast to a larger audience? Try using the #edchat or #education hashtag... or do a search for it and see what comes up. Try finding hashtags for your interests or hobbies and search for them: it's a great way to sift through the 'twittersphere'.
• Find and 'Follow' people you like and build your network.
• Find someone of interest and see who/m they follow
• I gave examples of how I use Twitter for professional development, education discussions and the like and also to find great art resources and music.
• We covered retweeting quickly, reposting things that you read that you like, broadcasting to people who follow you. 
• One of my favorite people to follow on Twitter is @guykawasaki ... and endless source of bizarre, and creative things on the web. Kawasaki (a short bio from Garage.com on him) uses Twitter as an engine to promote his books and business... and he's quite successful at it.

Reggio
100 Languages of Children

The Romeo and Juliet Story
"Tell me why this story is still relevant"

We discussed the 'expert' worry of teaching kids. Often, kids are the tech experts in the room. Build on this! Admit what you don't know, and invite them into problem solving.

Reminding us, and kids, that it takes time to build mastery. 

Lunch!

Recap.

Dive In! What do you want to learn, and what are some strategies to accomplish this?

Phrase based searching: Introduction to, topic 101.

"documentation of student learning Reggio Emilia"

Overcoming technical difficulties!
Patience, learning how it works, and wading through.

The importance of choosing a path.

Many thanks for some brave leaps today. Already looking forward to tomorrow!

We win.