Friday, February 08, 2008

Friday


Today is the twelfth day of class. I hope that I have given you something of value over these days and that we can only add to the fun over the next months. I wanted to take a moment and review my expectations.

1. Make connections every day. The power to make connections in this global, digital, networked world is essential. Instead of having one teacher, have many. For example, on blogmeister there are thousands of teachers and students from around the world. Write to them, read their stories, and then write about the experience on your blog. Take a moment today and read some of the blogs from K-2 grade classrooms. They are fun to read. There is a saying that "isolation is the enemy of improvement". Make connections, collaborate, and improve.

2. Always do your best. You never know who is watching your work or reading your blog. Often people do not realize the power they have until it is lost. You are in a time unique to human history. You can read everything ever written at anytime. You can contact almost anyone at anytime. You can publish your ideas and thoughts instantly. That translates to huge gains in productivity. If the world is moving faster then you must as well. There is no substitute for hard work.

3. Add something to the conversation. Have a story to tell. This could be about how to make a ball bounce, issues you have in learning math, or how you are trying to work together with your classmates. Learn how to get your point across. Spend some time today looking at the read counts on your blog. How can you increase them? If you have a story to tell people from all over the world will read what you have to say. If we all add some thing of value to the conversation everyday (remember R1-R4?) there will be an incredible amount of learning going on in this classroom.

OK. Enough reading. Notice that you read (and I wrote) the above in 3D (links, etc...). Start writing that way!

Today (Web1-2): Grading. I will be looking at all of your work to date. If you are done then help others, read blogs, edit your writing. Web 4 will be revising their ThinkQuest presentations.

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