Session+8

Session 8.1 Opener media type="custom" key="10586048">

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/summer11onlinecourse

Session 8.2 Teacher Conversations

http://www.edutopia.org/collaboration-age-technology-lisa-huff

How much does your school/district currently support and or encourage collaboration between teachers? Our school and district encourage collaboration among teachers in constant and positive ways. Whether it be the mentor program for new teachers, departmental development days and activities (such as Civics Nght or Generation Citizen) or my 8th grade team, teacher collaboration is at the forefront of many undertakings.

How much do you seek to collaborate with teachers and how do you accomplish this? On a daily basis, my 8th grade team collaborates on academic matters, projects, outside trips and activities and student evaluation. My department and more specifically all 8th grade Social Studies assist each other in planning for midterms and finals and make themselves available for sharing proven lessons, unit ideas and professional development activities.

To what extent do you think collaboration is of growing importance for teachers seeking to implement a 21st century classroom? Every teacher comes to the school or district with their own experience and exposure to technology. Like all the various backgrounds of our faculty, everyone has a unique and distinct contribution to the collaborative and collegial bonding --technological experience is a part of their uniqueness. Bringing all these backgrounds together is the key to catapulting all teachers into the 21st century classroom. Collaboration is crucial to the overall success of a school and a district.

In what ways, if any, do you see the thoughts in this article applying to "student" conversation? Students of the 21st century have made the advancements of technology a entrenched part of their inner and outer makeup...Their use and comfort with today's technology make them creatures of learning unlike any generation before them. They are quite honestly wired differently in order to adapt to the world around them. To be part of their conversation, educators must appreciate, enter and coexist in their 21st century minds and classrooms... We and they bring an enormous amount of intellectual baggage and capacity to the classroom ---our abilities to collaborate with them and our colleagues to be the greatest challenge.

//"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew//." **Abraham Lincoln**
 * Session 8.3 Innovation in Education**

> Does this quote apply to education? Explain your answer. Lincoln warns that present challenges cannot always rely on the doctrines, styles and "dogmas" of the past. As important as history may be, it is not always the answer to meet new and never before seen challenges. Education is a perfect example of this dilemma. The educational problems and challenges of today are unique and overwhelming. In previous decades, America's educational issues were localized as American issues. We are now an interconnected global community where the past resolutions prove unworthy and limited. How we teach, what we use to teach, who we teach and what we teach are so different from the past. Educators confront these frontiers with a realization that "new" answers are imperative. **Session 8.3. Sir Ken Robinson's Talk**
 * What is the general meaning of this quote by Lincoln?

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