Learning online

Today Sandvika vgs hosted a conference about learning with ICT and internet resources (see information in Norwegian here). I think it is essential for teachers to once in a while take a break from the classroom, meet other teachers and simply be inspired. Conferences, courses and seminars also make us reflect on the work we do and in an ideal world we return to our classrooms as better teachers. Will Richardson's talk about "Tools of the read/write web in schools" was one of the many interesting contributions. One of his main points was that the internet already is an important learning community for many children and teenagers. However, this learning happens outside of the classroom and kids choose themselves to find and use information about the things that they care about. A lot of the time kids don't even realize that they gain a lot of valuable and sometimes invaluable knowledge in the process. One of the main challenges for us teachers in the future will be to take part in and influence the learning community that already exists online. Right now children and teenagers are probably better at this than we are. Richardson used this video as an excellent example of how kids use the web to learn: