Nov

21

Connected cross-country

November 21, 2007 | | Leave a Comment

I am spending the day at a local high school, helping teachers and students during a national learning video conference initiative on Diet and Body Image. Billed as a national youth town hall, and supported / organized by the National Reseach Council and CRC-Canada’s Virtual Classroom Program the event allowed youth in five schools – one in Newfoundland, one in Alberta, two in Ontario and one here in Fredericton – the opportunity to share and learn about a number of issues (diet, activity, eating disorders, steroids, plastic surgery) with each other.

Students worked synchronously in large group and smaller backchannel conversations in breakout discussions using video conferencing, asynchronously in smaller groups using posts in video kiosks to a website and by blogging their issues and solutions.

Plain and simple, having students bringing their knowledge to the table, mashing it up with new understandings and ideas and working together to communicate and share this knowledge with others is a model for the new learning communities we need to promote in the 21st century.

In the end, they probably haven’t solved the issues surrounding body image, but by working together, having conversations where they connect their own understandings and by communicating these new ideas – all through the opportunities afforded by technology – to their fellow learners they have begun to learn just how to connect, collaborate and communicate – they keys to school 2.0!

It is not about the technology – it’s about the information. But technology is the key to the possibilities.

tags: technology, education, learning, whipple, school 2.0


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