Wednesday 27 April 2011

Calling all teachers - I need you!


If you are a teacher, no matter what age range you teach or where you teach but if you have an interest in using mobile devices (phones, ipads, hand held consoles etc) in your lessons then I really would like to hear from you.
I am looking for teachers to join an online closed community on Facebook over the next few months.
This group has been created to invite practitioners to discuss the use and access to mobile devices in the classroom.
The cloudlearn project starts from the premise that the culture seen in many schools and colleges of blindly 'locking and blocking' in the classroom is no longer acceptable: 
* it does not prepare young people for the real world 
* it is liable to be dangerous (you wouldn't try to enhance water safety by keeping children away from water until they were 16 then throwing them off the pier...) 
* it misses some outstanding learning opportunities 
* it is disengaging ("every turned off device is a turned off child") 
* it is wasteful of resources 
...and as many, many teachers students and schools are finding, it is unnecessary. 

The key aim of the Cloudlearn project is to source, collate, reflect on and publish proven effective practice from experienced classroom teachers and practitioners - building from what worked for us, in our respective cultural and educational contexts, to offer a portfolio of general and proven approaches. 

The end-of-the-year outcome is to provide sets of strategies and advice, both specific and generic, for adults and organisations, and for teachers and their students, to help them to see the need to move beyond "locking and blocking". These sets would be given to those involved in education around the world, not just in the UK. 

Over the next few months we will discuss as a group our thoughts, views and personal experiences on this and share the successes of mobile devices and the impact on teaching and learning in the classroom. This forum will become a 'closed and secret' forum once everyone has joined. This is because, we will not only be discussing the successes we have experienced but the challenges and issues that teachers and students face in using this type of technology. 

For more general information on this project visit:http://www.cloudlearn.net/
If you would like to take part then please contact me by email or via twitter @julietteheppell as soon as possible, there is a limit to how many teachers can take part so it will be first come first served.

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