Integration Tips

Be Efficient

• Focus your time and energy on the devices that your students have access to and are using.
• There is too much out there to use every web-based tool.
• To avoid lost classtime, evaluate each web 2.0 tool before implementing.
• Focus on the resources you have available and steer your professional growth in those areas.

Know Your Students

• Know how many students have their own devices and the web apps they are using.
• Use student surveys at the beginning of the year to gather email, IM and social networking data.
• Take advantage of cell phones, don't bann them. Allow students to use them to collect data.
• Find out what students want to know and harness their enthusiasm.

Communicate in Multiple Modes

• Communicate with them through a variety of means AND allow them to communicate with each other similarly.
• Synchronously - Face-to-face conversations, Skype, iChat, Adobe Connect, Elluminate, WebEx
• Asynchronously - Blog comments, wikis, discussion boards, web forums, podcasts
• Nearly Now - IM, text messaging, micromedia

Create a Rich and Stimulating Learning Environment

• Foster content development in students using social networks, blogs and wikis.
• Encourage students to be communicaotrs through email, IM, text messaging and micromedia.
• Focus learning on relationships, community, connectivity and access to information.
• Take advantage of that "Nearly Now" time that students are interacting in to question, probe and enrich student thoughts.

Transform Teaching Practice

• Take traditional pedagogy to web 2.0.
• Design multidisciplinary instruction that enables students to call on:
  • their abilities of sysnthesis
  • their ability to work in teams
  • their ability to understand the context
  • their artistic and creative abilities
• Make sure the work you ask students to do asks them to:
  • find information online
  • validate information they find online
  • synthesize and leverage the information they find online into something new
  • communicate new ideas and information
  • collaborate and problem-solve with new information

Cell Phones in the Classroom

Assessment

• Create assessments that provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate mastery in different ways.
• Provide choice to students in the way they wish to be assesssed.
• Does this mean in every assignment? No.
• Is there room for freedom for both teachers AND students? Yes.

Social Learning Absolutes

Online Safety

• The online environment can not be adversarial.
• It should not feel pressured.
• Parent and teachers need to take steps to educate students about cyberbullying and how to prevent it.
• More information and downloadable resources at http://mysafesurf.org