Technology Blog Post #5

http://interacc.typepad.com/synthesis/21st_century_learning/

Do I feel like I am more prepared to teach 21st century learners after this course..?

I feel like I just passed by an enormous buffet of all good things to eat … and got to sample a few delicious morsels before plunging in.. I had no idea how much was out there! - beyond MS Office and apps such as Photoshop and Illustrator (which may not be used so much in schools due to their price).

I almost feel.. I don't know, proud? grateful? - that people have created so many tools and programs and then they themselves and others as well have integrated into education. I wish I had gotten to use these when I was a kid!

I absolutely love that there are SO MANY Web 2.0 tools that utilize visuals and creativity for students and teachers to use. And I realize that we could only touch on some of them in class as an introduction in the two months of class. As we know the "traditional" means of teaching worked well with just a narrow group of students, and personally, I imagine that even they were bored sometimes too. (Not to say that everything is always going to be amazingly fun for everyone all the time, but hey, the more we have in our teaching tool kit the more students we can reach). In our class of 14 grad students I saw lesson plans and units created by my classmates that integrated the tools in such a way that I wanted to not only sign up to be a student in their classes (and I wasn't a big fan of school after the 3rd grade, when we stopped making things in class), but also to teach another subject in addition to art. 

Of the tools that we used in class Prezi definitely stood out to me and is something that I will definitely be using in the classroom both as a presentation tool and maybe even as an art too. I also loved Blabberize, Comic Master, and Thinglink. I am highly interested in further learning in how to integrate Web 2.0 tools into art projects in addition to my goals of teaching integrative art. I think it is definitely an interactive process.

Because of my "blabbering" at at my work about the cool Web 2.0 tools that we learned about in class as well as creating Tagxedo landscapes (wordscapes?) and also Tagxedo ties for Father's Day with my students my boss recently set up a small computer lab at the school and I will be the "Technology teacher" there!

Yes, I do feel like I am more prepared to teach 21st century learners after this course. It is helpful to look at the world from our students' perspective as we did in class; it is so different than when I was a kid, pre-internet (very different!). Students have a lot on their plates to choose from. And we the teachers have access to the buffet… Order up!


For educators in the Chicagoland area working on integrating technology into their classrooms and schools (or those who may happen to visit the area for the length of a semester..) Nicole Zumpano is the best Technology Professor you could possibly come by. She instructs at Dominican University in River Forest, IL and National Louis University in Chicago. Additionally she is a member of Columbia College's T.E.A.M Fellowship: Transforming Media Through the Arts and Media. Check out her technology resource Wiki for an incredibly comprehensive look into useful technology for classroom educators.