It is an ongoing process

Wednesday and Thursday of the this week I will be at the google offices. I am really looking forward to this hands on learning and to spend time with some great educators. Summer is for learning and this will be my jump start into a summer full of learning.
Though I haven't been writing much I have been reading and doing some thinking. One of the things on my mind is the need to always be ready with the story. Recently online I was questioned as to why it is important for teachers to have technology skills if they already posses good teaching skills. It is actually a difficult question to answer because there are so many underlying issues that are implicit in the question. Many things ran through my mind, hundreds of quotes about the skills necessary for digital world , the year long process of discussion and discovery that the staff has undertaken at school about teaching and learning in the 2st century, the digital divide and how it will effect our community etc. Also several posts I have read recently give glimpses of an answer and I will quote a couple of them here...
Jeff wrote...

"The oppressed in the digital divide:

1. Those without access to tools of global conversations.
2. Those without skills to contribute to global conversations.

pg. 64

I like Siemens definition here at the end of oppressed. What does it mean to be oppressed in a digital world. Those without access and without the skills to contribute to a global conversation are at a disadvantage.

Siemens, G (2006). Knowing Knowledge. "

I lost the link to these two my apoligies to the author...I will look for it andupdate the post..it was a user error with google notebook)

We use blogs, wikis, podcasts, and many other Web 2.0 tools to help students understand that knowledge is an active process of construction and not something that arrives in a textbook, neatly compartmentalized into chapters or units.

How can we possibly help our students be co-contributors and researchers if we ourselves don’t engage as learners and experience what it means to construct knowledge?

Cents Worth » What’s go...

the 3Rs are no longer enough. They are merely elemental — compared to the rich and exciting information skills that are absolutely critical to not only our children’s future, but ours as well. ..and gaining this new information skills can only happen from within this new information landscape. It’s why every child should be walking into their classroom with a computer under their arm, every classroom should breath with the global information landscape, and every teacher should trained and practiced in the life-long-learning literacies of the emerging future.

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