21st Century Learning – Page 8 – Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, collaboration, digital learning, professional development

25 Years in Ed Tech — 25 Lessons Learned!

Posted on June 1, 2015March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

After serving at a school for 33 years, more than 25 or them as an educational technology faculty member, I am departing in a few weeks and moving on to new experiences. This year I’ve had plenty of time to think about my service on an edtech faculty team, ruminating on my rich experiences. I’ve helped teachers and students use technology in ways that help them grow into more effective and reflective learners, though in truth, I’ve probably learned far more than I’ve helped others learn.

While I will miss the daily joys and the challenges of 21st Century school life, I expect to continue supporting people — students, parents, family, friends, and anyone else — as they discover more about living and learning in a digital world with social media, apps, the latest devices, and whatever else that appears on the edtech horizon. Of course, I’ll keep blogging right here at MediaTechParenting.net.

So below are 25 observations (lessons learned) that grow out of my 25 years of teaching and learning with educational technology.

Me in the cherry picker so we can film an assembly from a good angle.

1. The curriculum and student learning are at the core of our work. The mission is to figure out how to help teachers learn new skills so they can help students learn more effectively and productively.

2. Collaborating with teachers on new technology projects in their classrooms is essential and best way to help them learn. Communicating with those teachers is paramount.

3. We need administrators to evaluate faculty members regularly, assessing how teachers infuse technology into the curriculum and how these teachers expand their skills over time.

Continue reading “25 Years in Ed Tech — 25 Lessons Learned!” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, digital footprings, parents and technology, privacy, sharing media, social media

Sharenting? Kids Are Beginning to Notice

Posted on May 16, 2015March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Two years ago, for the first time, students took me aside to wonder aloud how to go about asking their parents not to share photos. It happened again last year when a child commented about baby photos that were especially embarrassing.

All of this adult sharing of kids’ images and information is called “sharenting.” A fair number of people, including researchers, are wondering about the effect that too much sharenting has on kids.

A few months ago researchers at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital conducted a survey on the subject. The hospital’s National Poll on Children’s Health investigates topics several times a year, polling adults in around 2000 randomly selected, nationally representative households, about significant health issues that relate to children. In March the hospital announced the results of a November-December 2014 poll that asked 21st Century parents a range of questions about how they use social media to gain knowledge about parenting on social media as well as how they share information about their children.

Continue reading “Sharenting? Kids Are Beginning to Notice” →

21st Century Learning, computer history, parents and technology, women and computing

Top Secret Rosies: Female Mathematicians During World War II

Posted on April 10, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

With so many STEM-in-the-curriculum discussions and the urgency to encourage 21st Century girls and young women to take more interest in science and technology, it’s exciting to discover a resource that shares a story about women and some amazing mathematical achievements.

Check out Top Secret Rosies a video about the women, recruited by the United States Army during World War II, who worked on a top-secret mathematics project. The women, all of whom possessed strong math skills, were recommended by their college professors and traveled to Philadelphia to do the complex ballistics calculations that were required to aim weapons more accurately.

Continue reading “Top Secret Rosies: Female Mathematicians During World War II” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, maker movement, parents and technology

Makerspaces Are Amazing, Yet I Remember When…

Posted on February 17, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

My local makerspace in Washington, DC — FabLab.

I am so energized by makerspaces, where people — children and adults — have access to all sorts of equipment to invent, try out ideas, and make things. I’ve spent some time in makerspaces at a number of conferences, and last summer I wrote about my experience at Gary Stager’s Constructing Modern Knowledge 2014 (CMK14) conference in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Read CMK post # 1. Read CMK post #2).

At my school our fifth graders have a small but lively makerspace where they can try ideas, often fail, and always have an opportunity to keep going and try again and the room is awash with small motors, LED devices, needles, fabrics, and even a few arduino boards. Parents and teachers should become aware of the trend for these innovative spaces and learn more about them. It will only benefit the learning of their 21st Century children and students. Continue reading “Makerspaces Are Amazing, Yet I Remember When…” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, coding, professional development, programming, teaching digital kids

Learning How to Code: Demonstrating How to Learn – Report #2

Posted on February 11, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

We educators offer great gifts to our 21st Century students when we demonstrate that we, too, can learn new things. By letting children see us mastering unfamiliar information, figuring out problems, overcoming challenges, and yes, even making mistakes, we help them develop more comfort and confidence when they make errors and feel like they are not making progress. We adults teach all the time, but we probably don’t model learning new material nearly enough, and the kids notice it.

As Ted Sizer wrote in his book, The Children Are Watching, they notice what we do and what we do not do. (A good book, by the way, for teachers and parents to read).

So this year I’m demonstrating how much I have to learn for students in grades one through five who attend my MIT Scratch coding activity. Literally, they are watching me learn how to code Scratch scripts.

Continue reading “Learning How to Code: Demonstrating How to Learn – Report #2” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, coding, parents and technology, programming, teaching, teaching digital kids

Hour of Code Reflections: What a Difference a Few Words Make!

Posted on January 15, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

What if we encouraged young learners, when they encounter a difficult learning task, to replace the words “I don’t get it” with “I haven’t figured out the problem yet”? Can changing just a few small words make learners more comfortable when they work on unfamiliar or difficult activities?

I’ve spent the last month mulling over this word change idea after participating in Hour of Code activities with young 21st Century learners at my school in December. Watching the children in kindergarten and grades three, four and five solve puzzles and play the unfamiliar coding games was eye-opening because in each class the majority of students — and some of the teachers — were working on learning tasks that they had never encountered before (definitely terra incognita). Continue reading “Hour of Code Reflections: What a Difference a Few Words Make!” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, digital citizenship, digital kids, educating digital natives, parents and technology

Family Online Safety Institute Conference 2014: Lots to Learn

Posted on November 14, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

A year has passed and once again I’ve attended the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) annual conference — this time the 2014 edition. I was especially excited to be learning, connecting, and enjoying the events with a bevy of edtech and teaching colleagues — 15 at last count — educators who are committed to supporting 21st Century learning and to guiding our students’ parents, grown-ups who must continually fine-tune their 21st Century parenting skills.

Read my FOSI 2013 posts.

Right at the beginning we learned about FOSI’s latest research, this time focused on parenting in the digital age. A presentation by researchers at Hart Associates gave us more insight into the excitement, the concerns, and the hope that parents have about their children’s connected world lives. The good news is that parents’ knowledge is increasing and so is the confidence that they bring to parenting digital natives. I’ll share lots more about that in a future post, but you can read the full report before I get to my review of the research. Continue reading “Family Online Safety Institute Conference 2014: Lots to Learn” →