PODs in the Classroom

Great quote from this interview of Sonya Woloshen speaking about personally owned devices (PODs) in the classroom.

We will always know a cell phone. We will always know an iPod. We need to learn to use these tools for learning. 

This is part 1 in a series of 2009 interviews by Dave Truss. Check out part 3, Expectations and Attitudes.

Two of the classes I currently teach are BYOL (bring your own laptop). The other three classes are totally online. So, I suppose all of my current students rely almost exclusively on their own personal devices. I believe this empowers my students, preservice educators, to become more technologically competent. They need to personally invest in their own professional development and realize the potential of their own devices before they'll effectively incorporate technology into their own teaching.

Thanks to one of my students, Lindsey, who posted the above video to her own blog recently.

The Moral Imperative of Teaching

It's easy to forget just how much teachers shape the moral character of their students. Today, Larry Cuban posted his Thoughts on Teaching, a look back at his commencement speech from 2001 in which he reflected on the teaching profession, calls for reform, and the requisite need for teachers to provide both intellectual and moral attentiveness.

Moral attentiveness means to concentrate on helping students grow as persons in grace and sensitivity, becoming more rather than less thoughtful about ideas, becoming more rather than less respectful of others’ views, and becoming more rather than less responsible for reducing social injustice. Questions of what is fair, right, and just arise constantly in classrooms; students learn moral sensibilities from how their teachers answer those questions….

I believe teaching and learning are inherently social and that much of what we learn from each other is consequential–the result of what happens peripherally to any core subject area. All teachers bare an enormous responsibility for modeling so many things beyond their subject area–the ethical use of media and technology, digital citizenry, inquiry, critical thinking, collaboration, respect... For good or bad, students learn more from their cumulative experience at school than from any one teacher or class. Likewise, teachers learn a great deal from and are shaped themselves by their cumulative experience with students over the years.

Cuban's full blog post is a terrific reminder of the art of teaching, but Scott McLeod took this one step further in his own post today, Blogging v. Teaching, suggesting that teaching and blogging are natural extensions of one another. What a great way for teachers to think about how and why they should embrace technology and Web 2.0 social media!