Taking Web 2.0 to the Next Level

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the OTF sponsored workshop Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. This workshop enabled me to spend an entire day working with other educators experienced in the use of web tools in a small group session that was facilitated by Will Richardson.

In my own mind I felt that I had become fairly comfortable and competent in the use of web tools in the classroom. I have introduced blogs, podcasts, wikis, voicethreads, and digital stories to my students, and I have been thrilled with the results. I signed up for the "Advanced" session of the workshop because I had attended the previous OTF conference, Expanding Our Boundaries, last February (also facilitated by Will Richardson) and I was curious about how my thinking would be pushed this time around.

Will wasted no time challenging us to be more selfish about our personal learning. He stressed that we need to consider how we can use the tools available to us to enhance our own learning instead of simply thinking of how they can be used in the classroom. To get his point across, he asked us the following question:

"If there was one part of your personal learning practice that you
wanted to focus on today, what would it be? What questions would
you seek to answer?"

Those of us in attendance completely missed the point of the question, so as a result Will had us do the activity again. It seems that we had a very tough time thinking selfishly!

Later on in the session we began to focus directly on how we could get our students to use web tools more effectively in the classroom. Will challenged us to "Shirky-ize" our lessons, a reference to Clay Shirky's belief that students need to share their work, cooperate and collaborate with others, and "collectively act" within a social justice context. The energy level in the room had been high all along, but it reached a new high at this point. Many of us took a hard look at lessons and units that we would normally teach, with or without the integration of web tools, and began to develop them in ways that would impact student global-citizenship. We helped each other out and collaborated to push our thinking into areas that hadn't previously been considered. Come to think of it, we were modeling exactly what we want to see our students doing in class!

It will be interesting to see what type of impact these challenges will have on those of us who attended the workshop. Will our group continue to focus on developing project-based learning opportunities that have a social justice context, or will many of us slip into the trap of simply trying to cover the curriculum standards (and maybe throwing in a web-based tool here and there)? Also, will we successfully become more selfish about our own personal learning rather than focusing only on ourselves as teachers? I don't know about the latter, but I have a feeling that we are about to see some wonderful learning opportunities being developed in our classrooms. I certainly hope so!