Ed Tech Academy 2012: Tanya Joosten

Had a fun time at Day One of Roane State's Ed Tech Academy. Tanya Joosten offered the morning keynote on why and how to use social media as a teaching tool. She's a big Twitter fan and offered practical advise on why and how to use Twitter to increase students' feelings of connectedness.

Before diving into that, she talked a bit about student engagement. I was surprised by the notion that disengaged students, rather than just being bored, might actually believe something is wrong with them or missing that prevents them from "getting it" the way other students supposedly "get it". The idea made me wonder how many classrooms I've worked in where the majority of students felt isolated by the assumption that they were not understanding something that everyone else understood easily.

It can be hard to see the classroom experience through a student's eyes. Michael Wesch's video ("A Vision of Students Today") helps set things in perspective:

Learning is a partnership. We have to find ways to show our students that we trust them to take responsibility for their own learning. We have to be ready to trust our students and make them full partners in their own learning. Only then should we start reaching for the toolbox to figure out which tool is right for the job.