I am speaking to four groups of ICT teachers: two from primary schools and two from secondary schools.
I have been asked to tell them about read/write web stuff. I've to get them interested and enthusiastic about the possibilities.
I have forty-five minutes to do it in!
Help! :-)
Where do I start? What is the one thing that I absolutely have to show or tell them about?
Technorati Tags: read/write web, web 2.0, help, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog
How to Get Kids Excited About Writing
3 days ago
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5 comments:
Hi David,
I'd go with whatever you are most interested and enthusiastic about.
Make sure it is something they can actually do in thee own schools, there are some wonderful tools out there that we can't touch due to filtering. Limiting your enthusiasm to 45 minutes will be the hardest part;-)
Hello Anne
I must admit, I had decided not to major on blogs. Perhaps I would say a bit at the end and maybe refer to them in the passing, but not to make them a focus. I'll tell you why and then say how I've altered my opinion. :-)
I only have 45 minutes. My fear is I could easily spend all of that time trying to explain blogs to people who don't get it and the same time again trying to convince the sceptics that it's A) not all a waste of time; B) not all about ego; and C) not opening the door to bucketloads of innapropriate comments.
I decided therefore to go with a Trojan horse approach. Start with stuff that seems less threatening, that is easy for people to get their heads round, and sneak some blog stuff in at the end. I therefore thought that online bookmarks and Flickr were good places to start.
However, one of your parting phrases has made me re-think:
"...throw in some of the neat Flickr tools that they can also use on the blogs.
Hmm! In many ways, blogs are about pulling a whole bunch of read/write web tools together. Blogs give these tools a focus or a meaningful context. I'm begining to wonder if blogs are the heart of the read/write web rather than just one among many tools.
I think I need to think it out again. :-)
I'm still worried about the 45 minute thing though!
Hello John
See my above reply... currently what I am most interested in is Flickr and del.icio.us. I think both of these, certainly del.icio.us, can easily be done in schools and are useful across the whole curriculum. The chap who invited me to talk asked for a list of the things I would be looking at and said he'd try to ensure that they were all unblocked and that teachers would be able to access them. That was good and I think he is working hard to make the system fit for teachers rather than make the teachers fit the system. :-)
As for your last comment... thank you... I think. Is that a compliment, or do you just mean that I can never stop talking?
Anne says:
"Thanks for taking the time to comment back."
When one gets such thoughtful and thought provoking comments - what else can one do? Thank you for keeping me thinking.
There can be only one.
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