I think that many students and most faculty seem learning as disconnected subjects. One example is Foreign Language, English as Second Language, and English Language Arts. These three areas share many more commonalities than differences. They all develop skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. They all have students communicate basic information, express personal ideas, criticially analyze material, and use social interactions in many different situations. I would like to see online sites where these three areas share their wonderful ideas about teaching and learning so that they can help each other. For example, students need to develop speaking skills in all three subjects so a Foreign Language teacher’s PowerPoint of transportation digital images can be used in the other two subjects. The teachers can pool their technology and print resources. The more we as teachers see the similarities in our subjects, the more we can help each other. The less time we can spend in finding, modifying or creating technology-rich resources, the more time we can spend in planning better lessons that will help our students learn more in-depth and in assessing our students’ growth.
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I completely agree with the pooling of resources as well as free and open collaboration on the production of educational content … worldwide!
Many (not all) teachers seem to work on their own physical class materials in isolation though they share ideas in the same staffroom. Perhaps the independence and self-reliance of teachers as far as material-production is concerned is more true in the U.S. than in Europe, because national curricula and team planning/preparation times for teachers are more common (though not compulsory) in European countries?
If free, open source blogs, tags, and wikis were standard education tools, and teachers were encouraged and supported in using them with a collaborative mindset (i.e. “please remember to tag and title so others can find your examples easily”) the world would look a lot brighter just one year from now for teachers and students 🙂
Inel,
I agree so much about tagging for education. Although I like flickr, the tags generally are not helpful and therefore, this great collection of images is liking trying to find one certain snowflake in a snow storm. One of the reasons I switched to wordpress was that it permitted tags.Maybe people can use a tag system which focuses on subject area, skill area, and specific topic which seem to be the most general. Standards do vary by state and country.
Thanks
Harry