These are excerpts from a Kim Cofino fireside talk at WorldBridges, as edited by Vance Stevens.
Her main points form the basis for a Personal Learning Network--what every teacher really needs in the Digital Age:
Tools
- RSS feed - find out what other professionals are thinking about and stay up to date
- Join an education social network - learn and share with other teachers
- Start a blog - express yourself and monitor your own growth as a professional
- Use Skype to share and connect with other professionals
- Attend online conferences - both synchronously and asynchronously [WorldBridges is a good place to catch up and get into conferences]
- Use Twitter - find professionals and make connections [Vance's own anecdotes are clear illustrations of how useful this can be]
- Design global online interactions for your students [e.g., iEarn, GLOBE, or your own class-to-class project]
Attitudes
- Be more flexible and try out more collaborative approaches
- Allow for student-led processes, and learning from peers
- Learn, create, and share with your students
- Use the Internet to let your students connect with other students--and teachers--around the world
- Students in developing countries already have "global attitudes" - multicultural and multilingual perspectives, so take advantage of these
