
From January to April I'll be teaching a course called ECMP 455. It's an advanced course on using technology in education. Whatever that means.
Actually what it means is I want my students to dig deep into what teaching and learning looks like in 2012 as great teachers and great ideas come together to make learning better and richer and even transformative. I've taught this particular course 4-5 times now and am really looking forward to this term. I've got some interesting and new ideas planned and I'll share on that later.
The class is made up of pre-service teachers who are usually in their 3rd or 4th year of teaching and have had some classroom experience. This course is totally optional so they take it because they have an interest in technology and usually have some skill set above the average pre-service teacher. That doesn't mean they are programmers, just that this class doesn't focus much on the "how to" stuff, but more the "why to" stuff.
One idea that I began a few years back was the virtual mentorship. I connected my students with teachers and classrooms around the world and they did varying degrees of work with those … Read the rest