Global Friendships

I found the online article, Online Collaborative Inquiry, extremely informative for the 21st century teacher. Not only did it state numerous statistics measuring how the technological classroom has been proven to be more effective in teaching, but it also recommended and discussed numerous ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. One quote that I believe sums the whole article up is, "Students should not be mere consumers of technology. They should be composing and creating effective communications with the tools to develop advanced literacy skills." The author of this article explains that we need to teach students to build relationships with others through posing and solving problems collaboratively and cross-culturally. She wants educators to design and share information for global communities in order to meet a variety of purposes. I think this author is right on the money. We need to make sure that the technology we use in the classroom has a real meaning, not just using technology because it's there. Technology can be used as a bridge to other classrooms, communities, and cultures. 

Here are a couple of great ideas for today's technological classrooms.

• The Global Read Aloud
• This read aloud is completed by more than 30,000 teachers and students yearly. Classrooms across the world read the same novel within a five to six week span. As they read, classrooms communicate with others through blogs, wikis, twitter, skype, edmoto, kidblog, and other tools.
• Quad Blogging
• This blogging system sets your classroom up with three other classes. Each week, a different classroom is in the "spotlight" with the other three classes commenting on that class's blog. This assures that blogs are constantly being viewed and commented upon.