I have just posted a new podcast- an interview with Lisa Parisi. You can find it here. There are a number of things she said that really struck me.

She talked about how her teaching has changed since she started adding telecollaborative projects. She said her students are more in control of their learning. They self-select topics and are much more invested in their work. When the work comes out of the interest of the child, the work is much better. Whereas in the past she tried to be more in control of what happened in the class, she has learned to give more control to the students.

Lisa’s students have expressed how they prepare differently (whether written work, a podcast or video) if they know they have an outside audience.

Another issue she addressed was how to find teachers who are interested in collaborating with her students. She talked about the importance of her network. One difficulty she has is finding a teacher who is as interested in continuing a connection with her class.

She made many more important points. Listen to the whole podcast (just 15 minutes). I’d love to hear your feedback on what she is doing. Have you found any changes in your classes? How are your students reacting to being part of an online project?

Susan

I guess each year we try to start with a resolve to improve ourselves. This year my goal is to spend more time on relationships. I guess as I get older I realize more and more how important people are and how relationships have to be nurtured. Sometimes we get so caught up in just dealing with the day-to-day that we don’t take the time to do that. The challenge is to find the time to listen and to really be present. We are so used to multi-tasking, but we need to relearn how to do just one thing at a time.

There are many relationships I want to nurture and grow. Certainly my personal relationships are of utmost importance. But there are also my professional relationships, many of which are online. How can we have more quality in our exchanges so that we all grow through them? I strongly believe it is important to reflect and to be open to changing our ideas and approaches through the dialogue that can happen. That takes time.

I have been exploring different tools with some of my online friends and colleagues and I find some more conducive to fostering exchanges than others. One I find invaluable is Skype. I can have conversations (voice and chat) with people all over the world including group conversations. I do a webcast once a month and meet with my partners in Long Island and Michigan to plan via chats and live conversations.

I also follow a number of people on Twitter. This is a tool that allows you to send short instant messages to multiple people (your followers) and lets you receive messages from the people you choose to follow. While I welcome many of the suggestions for sites and blogs to read, I find the limited 140 characters and the disjointed conversation somewhat unsatisfying. However, I found this video t about how one teacher is using Twitter in her class. She is creating more of a sense of community for her class and parents. It’s up to each of us to find the tools that work for us – after all it’s how we use them that counts.

One concern I have is that the more tools you use the more fractured the communication gets. We need to be able to go to one or two places to get everything. This is where I find an RSS reader is invaluable. I have been using Netvibes It helps by automatically bringing the blogs I want to read to my netvibes page. (If you want to learn more about it go to http://learnconnect.wikispaces.com/rss )

Another tool that seems to be interesting is Ning. This is a more complex social networking tool that allows for blogs, forums, uploading of images and videos – basically all the tools needed for people to communicate and work together. It creates a community! I belong to several Ning groups but don’t find I have time to keep up. So one of my goals this year is to whittle down what I follow to those that I feel are essential. I’m looking for quality to nourish my thinking. I would like to find more personal relationships online with whom to discuss educational issues.

For the new year I would hope that we can begin to reach out to each other as we are all here to enhance what goes on in our classrooms, to give our students and ourselves a chance to reach beyond the walls and corridors of our schools.

So please, read, reflect on what I am writing and share how our online relationships can grow. How do we make this community one which shares, listens and grows together? What do you think?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the people who have influenced me in my learning and those who play a part in my learning now. It has been an interesting journey.

I taught for 18 years at a private school in Montreal where I was the computer teacher. I am grateful to my colleagues there and to the environment that was fostered by the administration. We talked education frequently and they became a part of my learning and growth. We debated whole language, grappled with what it truly meant, planned and implemented many projects together and always questioned our practices and approaches. However, as the only computer teacher in the school, there were areas of what I wanted to know for which my colleagues could not be my mentors. I had to go elsewhere. There were books and certainly Seymour Papert was a huge influence in my becoming a more constructivist educator. But I did not have contact with him directly except on a rare occasion when I heard him speak at a conference.

I often think of Frank Greene, a professor at McGill who encouraged and nourished me. He spoke of walking the floor at a conference – that the contacts and conversations were as important as listening to the speakers. So true.

As I attended and spoke at conferences, I met people from outside my city and, through e-mail was able to start expanding my circle of mentors. I learned that people, even those on the conference circuit, are approachable and are truly happy to share what they know. People in the education business seem to want to share, to see the changes they are hoping for multiply.

When I left teaching and joined LEARN, my new colleagues were as collaborative and supportive as those whom I had left. Our conversations have forced me to think and rethink about my beliefs and to read and reflect about what I would like to see in education. As we do not meet often face to face, our conversations were often through e-mails and my personal learning network expanded.

However, it has been through the advent of web 2.0 that I have been able to have access to the people in my field on a regular basis and my own growth has been exponential as a result. I regularly read blogs (though I have learned to limit the number), listen to some podcasts and through online communities have come to know people as friends and collaborators whom I have never met face to face. I have many people I can call on to answer my questions, reflect back my thinking and to expose me to their explorations and ideas. Now I can walk the floors virtually and carry on conversations or just listen in on them to nudge my thoughts and point me to articles, new applications and exemplary student work. It has been an exciting time.

I know that teachers have limited time, but I also know that we want our students to be lifelong learners. I feel we have to model this and continue to learn ourselves.

So here are my questions
Who have been your mentors?
Who is part of your personal learning network (face to face or virtual)
How can you use the people in this group to expand your knowledge, share your ideas or create community?
Challenge
Choose one new thing to learn this week.
Where are you going to go to learn it (real world or virtual?)
Who can help you?

Don’t keep the answers to yourself. Share them by commenting on this entry.

Susan