{"id":398,"date":"2011-12-31T16:31:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T16:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ivyrun.com\/wordpress\/?p=398"},"modified":"2011-12-31T16:31:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T16:31:49","slug":"why-not-be-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=398","title":{"rendered":"Why Not Be Great?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the question <a href=\"http:\/\/sethgodin.typepad.com\/seths_blog\/2011\/12\/the-chance-of-a-lifetime.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29\">Seth Godin<\/a> asks in his blog post today. \u00a0His whole post is a celebration of innovation and revolution.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that&#8217;s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The first step is to define what it means to be &#8220;great&#8221; in whatever you do. \u00a0For my purposes, I&#8217;m going to start small: with the course I teach for pre-service undergraduates. \u00a0I think a great course would help students see how technology can support student learning in powerful ways by modeling that belief. \u00a0I think a great course would introduce students to a professional learning network that would live beyond the course. \u00a0Bring them into my world and hope they find it welcoming enough to want to stay even after May.<\/p>\n<p>Each semester, the course gets more and more student-centered as I try to model the kind of pedagogy I would like them to adopt. \u00a0I haven&#8217;t created the course for the spring but am considering a complete project-based approach in which small groups become experts in the use of technology to support instruction in a content area. \u00a0For each area of focus (writing &amp; publishing, data visualization, gaming &amp; interaction, collaboration), they will research and share the resources and information they find with their classmates and create a guidebook for their particular area. \u00a0My role will be to guide them in their exploration, providing foundations in educational theory and practice such as TPACK.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, I want them to see how social media including Diigo and Twitter can provide them access to a larger network of teachers. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/possibilitiesabound.blogspot.com\/2011\/12\/moving-from-private-practice-to-talking.html\">Lani Ritter-Hall<\/a> highlights research showing that Professionally Engaged teachers are more likely to adopt the kinds of pedagogy that I support and technology is one way to support that engagement.<\/p>\n<p>I have a few weeks before the semester begins to organize my ideas a bit better and put together a course site. I think I&#8217;ll start from scratch rather than trying to build on past courses as a way to challenge my own thinking about topics and activities. \u00a0I invite your ideas as well&#8230;I have a chance to mold the minds of impressionable new teachers, what should I be doing that will help make them great?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the question Seth Godin asks in his blog post today. \u00a0His whole post is a celebration of innovation and revolution. Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that&#8217;s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=398\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why Not Be Great?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[133,112,43,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-learning","category-teaching","category-technology"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4X3L0-6q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}