While I read Ah, Yes, More About Me? Here Are ‘25 Random Things’ and 25 Things I Didn't Want to Know About You and contemplated the efficacy of actually coming up with these things, I realized I’d like to change the assignment slightly. Instead, I did a sort of year in review to summarize 25 random things innovative educators can do to enhance teaching and learning.Here they are:
First Thing: Collect and save inspirational quotes.
Read: Ten 21st Century Education Quotes I Carry With Me
Second Thing: Develop your personal learning network
Read: 5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network
Third Thing: Go paperless.
Read: How I Lost 20 Pounds in One Month On a Paperless Diet and Do More with Less by Going Paperless
Forth Thing: Take control of your digital footprint
Read: Ideas for Making a Purposeful and Professional Digital Footprint
Fifth Thing: Visit schools known for educating innovatively
Read: Immunization for an Uninteresting Curriculum Found at the iSchool, The Power of 21st Century Teaching and Learning Brought to Life at Bronx Middle School CIS 339’s Open House, You Can Get a Dalton Education at a NYC Public School, Bridging The Digital Divide in NYC, Science Leadership Academy – Lessons Learned, and X's & O's for the OLPC XO - A View from the Classroom.
Read: HOW DO I HELP MY CHILD LEARN TO USE THE INTERNET WISELY? and New Technology Helps Keep Kids Safe on Cell Phones
Seventh Thing: Help your school go 1-to-1
Read: Low Cost Computing Options That Will Enable More Educators to Consider 1-to-1 Environments
Eighth Thing: Tap into your schools best resource – students.
Read: Starting a Student Support Team in Your School, 5 Innovative Ideas for Student Teams that Support 21st Century Teaching & Learning, Partnering with Student Tech Wizards to Provide Professional Development at Schools, and 8th Grader’s Advice for Questions Peers Might Ponder On Their Road to Achieving Success
Read: Why Every Parent and Teacher Should Learn MySpace and Facebook and A 30-Day Guide To Losing Your Digital as a Second Language (DSL) Accent and YOU'RE NOT TOO OLD FOR FACEBOOK
Tenth Thing: Start your own social network
Read: Social Networking for Innovative Educators and Keep Your Students Connected This Summer with A Social Network
Eleventh Thing: Figure out ways to use technology to connect with English language learners.
Read: 5 Translation Tools That Serve as Fantastic Resources for Students Who Are ELL, Foreign Language, and Struggling Readers
Twelfth Thing: Watch TED Talks for inspiration.
Read: Recommended Viewing for Innovative Educators
Thirteenth Thing: Start a blog.
Read: Why I started a blog and why maybe you should too and Great Way to Find Popular Keywords for Your Blog or Other Published Content
Fourteenth Thing: Lead, don’t follow when it comes to promoting the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning.
Read: Reasons to Promote Engaging Technologies Even Though Schools Filter Them
Fifteenth Thing: Consider the power of using cell phones to enhance education. Start with having students use them outside of school if your school does not allow them.
Read: The Value of Using Cell Phones to Enhance Education and Some Concrete Ways to Do So and Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning.
Sixteenth Thing – Think about your 25 Random Things to enhance Teaching and Learning.
Read: Using 25 Random Things to Enhance Teaching and Learning
Seventeenth Thing: Help your students stay organized.
Read: What’s Up? A Hello Friend Student Planner
Eighteenth Thing: Go to targeted conferences that enable you to achieve your learning goals.
Read: EduCon 2.1 - A Conference Worth Attending and The Confratute Virgin's Guide to Success
Nineteenth Thing: Identify mentors
Read: Developing Mentors from Your Personal Learning Network
Twentieth Thing – Get yourself and students published!
Read: Innovative Educators Can Help Students and Themselves Become Published Authors
Twenty First Thing – Enable students to broadcast themselves with audio and video.
Read: IStream, UStream! We ALLScream for UStream! And Podcast from Your Phone
Twenty Second Thing – Learn how you can begin transforming your school into a 2.0 environment.
Read: School 2.0 Transformation Toolkit - A Recommended Resource for Innovative Educators to "Let the conversation begin!"
Twenty Third Thing – Think about ways you can educate innovatively and determine goals for doing so.
Read: Educating Innovatively
Twenty Fourth Thing – Get to know the technology standards and how they align to various content areas.
Read: An ISTE Crosswalk by Six Major Categories
Twenty Fifth Thing – Join the conversation and begin commenting on blogs.
Read: Comments, Responding, Timeliness via Drape's Takes
These are 25 random things I've recommended this year on The Innovative Educator. I hope I've inspired you to pick a random thing or two to try.
I LOVE THIS -- Thank you for putting this list together. I love how they connect to entries that you've written.
ReplyDelete@Techomnivore, Thank you. Now it's your turn to come up with 25 Random Things that the Techomnivore recommends for enhancing teaching and learning. Looking forward to reading the post on your blog :))
ReplyDeleteLove it. I am a teacher too and this list is great!! Someone sent a RT about this on Twitter so I checked it out. I am following your blog now. :-) Please check out my lens on Squidoo about Special Education at http://www.squidoo.com/special_education and I have one one Webquests too at http://www.squidoo.com/webquests
ReplyDeleteEnjoy
Teddi
Count me as another new fan who saw this article on Facebook. I just twittered the article, hoping more people will read. You know, though, the link to the student organizer doesn't seem to work unless I'm doing something wrong?
ReplyDelete@Justina, Thanks for tweeting about the post. It was fun to write and think about. I checked the planner link and it worked. Hopefully, you'll get it to work. These planners are terrific as is the organization that produces them. They come with a dedicated and knowledgeable staff and you can even arrange for them to come to your school and do PD with your staff on how to use the planners to keep students organized.
ReplyDeleteI retweeted your link to my pre-service teachers. I had just written this: http://svanabel.edublogs.org/2009/02/10/25-random-thoughts-on-education/ on my blog and had assigned them the same post. Then that night on twitter...I saw a link to your blog post! We had just played with Twitter during class so it all kind of came full circle...sharing information and the power of networks. Great thoughts, very cool links.
ReplyDelete@svanabel, you know what they say about great minds...
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing a link to your post. I am going to read it now.