Now that I have my head about me...

[Jeremy Gypton]

Here's my bio, from my blog. I think it tells the story pretty well. I'm very new to blogging, and wikis, feel pretty good about RSS, and have had success over the last 2+ years in finding creative and useful ways to use technology to get my students closer to the content and producing better work.

But I'm always looking for new ideas, people who can challenge my thinking, and people whose thinking I might challenge, as well -- all in the pursuit of better lessons aimed at greater learning on the part of students...a better school experience all around.

I stumbled onto this group through Diane's blog, as I mentioned earlier and know exactly *zip* about it -- other than there was a join button, so I hit it, and now here I am typing. I'd love for comments on my blog, as I air out my thoughts there, and I'd also like to see what people think of how I'm trying to use my class wikis. Can any of you do that? Will you?

And if you have 11th or 12th graders, and would like to arrange some sort of connection between your students and mine, we ought to talk. I have nothing specific in mind at this point, but like good research, it's amazing what pops up when you just lay out the facts.

I added the RSS feed for this to my Bloglines account, so now I'll sit back and see what you folks fire at me -- I'm looking forward to responses.

jdg

[Anthony Armstrong]

Welcome to the site Jeremy. I just checked out your blog and left you a comment there and sent an email to your Ning account. We're glad to have you here and look forward to hearing more about your thoughts on technology, education, and your experiences as a teacher in a 1:1 school.

Anthony

[Jeremy Gypton]

Wonderful! So what can we do? What would you like to do? At this point I'm in a mood to just try things -- throw ideas into the wind and see where they fly, or flop. There's just so much opportunity to trade ideas, and learn from one another's mistakes that it would be stupid to not. Our profession, it seems, is such a solitary one, behind closed classroom doors. That just doesn't need to be the case, and with the technology it really doesn't need to be...we can trade ideas and materials across the world as easily as if from next door.

What's on your mind?

jdg

[Anthony Armstrong]

Jeremy,

I left a comment on your blog and I'd thought I would do the same here. I'm looking to reinvent myself as a teacher. I've been meaning to blog about this, but basically I've come to the conclusion that for the 21st century, it's more important that students know the skills of the Historian than it is for them to know all the details that are asked of them to know by our school's curriculum. The problem is this, all throughout my education in school I never learned what the Historian's process is. In my ten years of teaching, I've never been asked to teach the Historian's process in class either. Rather, I've been asked only to cover the content in the curriculum so that student's could pass the state wide examine at the end of the year.

I now work in a school that has a lot of technology available for its teachers and students to use. Like you, I don't use a textbook and rely a lot on the use of online databases and other tools to cover the content I want my students to learn. I use a wikis, blogs, and podcasts in class yet half way through this year, I still felt that how I was teaching still wasn't what my students needed to have for the 21st century. Finally, while reading the book "Reinventing Project Based Learning," it dawned on me. The authors asked me to think about the process I wanted my students to learn and when I thought about it, I realized that I had little knowledge as to what the Historian's process is.

Since that time, I've come to realize that I want to use technology in my classroom not so much in line with the school's curriculum, but rather in alignment with the Historian's process. That involves learning how to create questions, gathering research, organizing information, and coming up with independent thoughts and answers. It is in these methods that I want to prepare my students for the future in which they face for I believe the skills they carry from this will be more relevant and beneficial to them than if I were to just cover content and use technology to help me cover the content that the curriculum has dictated us to cover.

I'd like to learn more about how we can develop within our students the skills needed to be individual Historians. How do we go about modeling and helping our students create good questions (I know you spoken to some of this with your LoQ posts), utilizing primary resources (we use ABC-CLIO like yourself but I'm looking for other resources too), connecting with real world Historians and collaborating with others, and finally stating arguments and positions and defending those positions.

I think you and I do a lot of this already in our classes and with our teaching style. I'd just like to tap into your thought process so that I can strengthen my own and better deliver my students the education they need.