LEARNING & READY TO CHANGE

The exams are over and I’m here finding myself kind of “empty”. I spent two days at the seaside just relaxing, sunbathing, chitchatting, eating out, listening to my music & reading an incredibly inspiring book Net Smart How to thrive on line. I’ve recharged my batteries 🙂 Now I’m already thinking about my professional self-improvement & looking for new ways to be a better teacher, to find inspiration, motivation & use new apps & technologies in the right way. I’ve downloaded lots of apps I’ll be using during my course at Harvard in Boston in two days. I cannot wait!

I’ve been reading for some time now “teaching using web tools”, the fantastic blog by Ann Michaelsen a Norwegian colleague of Sandvika High School (Oslo) whose book “Connected Learners” (Kindle edition of course!) I’ve just bought. Like Ann I strongly believe that  is the future of education and also my future as “There is power in connecting and sharing. As educators we need to harness that power not to control kids, but to teach them and learn alongside of them.”

The other Blog I totally identify with is by Shelley Wright the creator of Powerful Learning Practice. She’s so competent, knowledgeable & inspiring! I love this video on connected Learning  “Everyone” 

Also interesting is the Blog Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne. Thanks to this guy I’ve discovered so many interesting websites and apps for educators.

As I’m devoting part of my summer holidays to attending a teacher training course instead of going to an exotic seaside resort,  I’ve somehow felt in some of the people I spoke to the “unasked question” why on earth, after an exhausting school year do you need to spend part of your vacations studying and working hard? Well, as simple as that: I want to improve my teaching because the skills required by a 21st century teacher are different from the one I was trained when I started my teaching career. And in order to survive in a school system which is by now rather conservative & stifling, I need to go out (of Italy) for a breath of fresh air.

modernteachers

 In order to deal with technology in class we cannot forget how important it is the concept of digital citizenship “the quality of an individual’s response to membership in a community.”I found this image very clear.

digital-citizenship

“Full participation in contemporary culture requires not just consuming messages, but also creating and sharing them. To fulfill the promise of digital citizenship, Americans must acquire multimedia communication skills and know how to use these skills to engage in the civic life of their communities. —Renee Hobbs, Digital Media and Literacy, 2010.

Yes, I want to learn, to engage & to improve myself as a person. See you when I come back from Harvard, a more relaxed, more enthusiastic & better person 🙂

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