Sharing and learning online

Seems like almost every week our national newspaper will post articles about using technology in school. Turns out Norway is the country in the wold with most technology in school. The question to ask is what are we getting out of this? According to the ESSIE The Survey of Schools: ICT in Education report Norway has the most computers pr student, the best high speed internet connections and the most digital cameras. And yet we only score right above average when it comes to the use of ICT in education.Norwegian teachers should be among the top 5 when it comes to using ICT in education.

Norwegian teachers should be among the leading experts in the world. We should be well used key note speakers and work shops leaders. I don’t think we are! The question to ask is why not? We have the most computers pr student, the best high speed internet connections and the most digital cameras. Even so we only score right above average when it comes to the use of ICT in education.

Connected learners

My class has recently been occupied writing a book about this and if we were to share one take away from the way we have been working with technology this year it would be this; work and learn together, collaborate online, find others online to learn from and share your work. Too many students are using their personal computers with emphasis on the fist word, personal. Sure, most students in Norway are sharing online. Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Instagram, you name it. But they are not sharing their learning. And if they are, they are not sharing enough. That is where the teacher has to step up. If the teachers start sharing their work, the students are more likely to do so too. Teachers need to show them how to. Teachers can do this by writing  on blogs, sharing ideas on Twitter and writing in Notebooks with the students.  Share documents on Google and share videos on how to learn. Make your own videos or use some of the thousands of videos out there!

VideoNot.es

As usual I find a lot of useful links following “Free technology for teachers“. The latest is VideoNot.es. You can use this if you post a video on YouTube for your math instructions. (Flip the classroom.) The students log on to VideoNot.es and take notes while watching the video. The document with the video and the notes is saved to your Google drive. You can share it with your teacher with your questions, or you can share it with fellow students and ask them to contribute as well. Have the whole class add notes to the document. When you write down the notes they are tied to the exact location in the video. Pretty smart! Look at the illustration below to see what kind of videos you can use.