Mark Hofer, Steve Whitaker, and Michael Kelly will join us on tonight’s SOS Podcast, where we will discuss this teacher preparation question. It should be an excellent discussion as all three taught pre-service teachers at the University of Virginia. Mark now teaches at the College of William and Mary.
To answer this question, what do we do with our colleagues in our schools to help them shift their teaching practices to more Classroom 2.0 practices? We have covered many topics in the podcast that support shifting individuals and schools, but two, in particular, jump out at me when working with new teachers.
Risk Taking– I wrote about this in my previous post. We ended up needing to postpone that podcast discussion with John Mikton. It is now scheduled for April 30th. When working with university students, one can start with their communication and learning practices. In most cases, this will involve tapping into their everyday life experience of using cell phones, social networking tools, information literacy, etc., while guiding them to see that they already have learning networks.
Professional Learning Networks– Much to being a shifted teacher is about being a lifelong learner connected to one’s physical and digital learning networks. We again draw on the pre-service teachers’ natural propensity to use technology to help them set up their RSS reader and connect to blogs, wikis, etc., that support shifted practices and new learning while offering examples of risk-taking activities by educators from around the world.