king23things’s Blog

“If you have come this far, hopefully I can ask you to travel a little farther” … line from the Shawshank Redemption

Background

This is an online course that will help you understand the most important new Internet technologies that are relevant for education.  The latest Internet technologies are collectively known as Web 2.0.  This second-generation of web tools is more powerful than the original set because they are interactive.  The first websites build over ten-years ago published information and were not interactive.  Our course is completely hands-on and has “23 things” that you will learn between now and the end of the year.  I am committed to everyone completing the course, so the only way you will not complete the course is if you don’t come to class or don’t ask questions when you are confused.

Collaboration

Please come ready to learn each teacher tech class.  Each week or two, we will do one of the 23 things.  I will stay on a particular thing until the majority of teachers complete it.  We will work on each thing in order, so everyone will be working on the same assignment at the same time.  This will pave the way for collaboration.   and only move on to the next thing when everyone has completed the assignment.  I have extra “things” (called stretch things) to challenge the more advanced users and keep them from moving ahead of the group.

Reflection

At the end of each activity, I have carefully chosen review questions for you to reflect on the activity and imagine how you might use it in your class.  All of the assignments will be hands-on and everyone’s projects will be available to review -  collaboration is encouraged.  For each “thing”, I have reflection questions that you should answer using your own website.  You may also review other teachers’ reflections, but please provide your own first.  At the end of each task, each person will reflect on the thing via their own website.

We will be using many different websites.  They are all free, but usually require you to register.  This means that you will have lots of usernames and passwords.   My strong recommendation is that create a Word document to keep track of website urls, usernames and passwords.

Keep in mind that every aspect of this online course is to demonstrate a useful Internet technology!  This includes things that you work on and tools that I use to demonstrate things.

Bon Voyage