Life-long Learners - That's the ideal we want our students to embrace. It's not so much about filling one's head with reams of information, but learning HOW to acquire information and knowledge as it is needed. And, since we need to be able to do this for our entire lives, being a life-long learner is one of the major goals of 21st Century educational practices.
But, if we teachers are going to model best practices for our students, that means that we must become life-long learners as well. The question is how can we do this with all of the time constraints that are placed on us?
The folks at CIJE (The Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education
www.thecije.org) have asked this question and have come up with a few suggestions...
One idea is that we offer LIVE on-line sessions on topics and ideas that have been suggested by our member schools. And, in the spirit of best practice, we deliver the information using the exact same tools, systems and techniques that our schools can use to create their own on-line presences for adult education, community learning or flipped/blended classes.
Since many of our schools are using the Google Apps For Education Platform, as well as iPads and Google Chrome laptops, our inaugural LIVE webcast topic was on... Goolge - its security issues and how that affects our schools' filtering systems. To help facilitate the program, we were joined, LIVE on-line, by a filtering and securities expert - Christopher Weimann - from the
K12usa.com organization.
Using the readily available - and FREE!! (a great resource for our schools) - Google Hangouts on Air, we broadcast a full 40 minute session. While this particular episode was geared towards IT coordinators, all of the 25 or so participants agreed that it was very informative and helpful.
Now, as every veteran teacher who uses technology knows, one must ALWAYS have a backup plan in place should the technology fail during a class. We are no different and a it's a good thing that we planned that way!! About 9 minutes into the presentation, our Google Hangout on Air experienced a crash. Fortunately, we had a second laptop running on a completely separate network that we were able to quickly switch over to. Even though our video was now relegated to two little squares at the bottom of the screen, the show went on and, if the feedback from the participants is any indication, was a great success!
https://youtu.be/nm14Pq8JruA
Our next LIVE broadcast will be Wednesday, February 17th at 12:00 noon PST (3 PM EST). We will be presenting a 30 minute practical lesson on how to "Flip" learning in classroom. This broadcast is geared particularly for teachers and will have real-life techniques that can be used immediately in the classroom.
Subscribe to my blogsite or my Twitter to feed for more information.
As always, I solicit your comments and suggestions on the blogsite.
Regards,
Yossie
Yossie Frankel
IT Director - Shalhevet High School
Tech Specialist - CIJE
