Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts

Educator, Vicki Davis uses blogging to teach her students. She shows them other ways to learn besides the conventional, paper and pencil method. I believe this is a great and innovative way to engage and teach the class, while exposing them to the latest technology. I must admit I had never heard of a "Wiki", but Vicki proves it is an effective tool in the classroom. You don't see the traditional row of desks and notebooks. Instead, you see a classroom full of students with computers at their fingertips. This is the direction in which the teaching field is heading, and at a rapid pace. This helps you visualize yourself in this type of classroom environment once you graduate and become an educator.

By using Google and its components in class, she encourages her students to look up assigned terms for their meaning. She also asks her students to collaborate and work together, as well as brainstorm, which is so important for their independent studies. The teacher and students work together as a team, and the students actually teach her some new things! By using Digi Teen, the students can communicate and work with other kids all around the world. The Flat Classroom is a terrific concept. It allows the students to experience new trends of technology being used around the globe, while writing reports and creating videos. I think it is absolutely fabulous that these kids from a small town in Georgia traveled to the Middle East to the Flat Classroom Conference. It serves students well to learn about kids from other cultures in different countries. These strategies empower the class, giving them a global perspective of their peers. It ultimately produces confident, independent, students with a better understanding of the latest technology and the rest of the world around them.