Thoughts about “Google Wave for Teachers: A Concept” #earlychildhood #teaching #naeyc
The Way Things Could Be for Teachers
Google is trying to get users to wrap their heads around this idea of a wave, which is basically the digital equivalent of a blank white board. In the wave, you can write correspondence, view documents or pictures, incorporate data from other web sources do all kinds of other things that would be available to a group of people sitting around a conference table. Let’s take that idea of a blank space or a wave in which a teacher can do productive work with others.
This potential for communication and collaboration would be a game changer for teacher. So many branches, you probably don’t even know where to start. It’s simple, every idea and step passes through the wave. Everyone has a voice that can be heard and responded to equally.
Google Wave is currently built to aid all kinds of text editing, namely e-mail and chat. If you look at that wave with the idea of lesson plans as an ongoing project, you should be able to gather input and feedback over a wave. Teachers can share their expertise in their subjects to include in other classes, such as research paper writing in English class to a lab report in Science class. In Google’s tech demo, once one user dragged files into the wave, a preview of the files appeared in another user’s wave. This same idea could work for sharing educational video and classroom photos.
Just what I was looking for! Was fortunate to have a friend offer an invite to me, and the first thing that struck me when I explored it was the potential of Google Wave being used in education, as well as for the professional development of teachers. From the perspective of being an early childhood educator, Google is now providing a wonderful platform for collaboration amongst educators. Definitely, it implies that the education community will need to examine beliefs about teaching and fundamentals of learning. We’ll also need to recognize importance of professional development, as well as the collaboration with families and colleagues in empowering learning, before the community can truly benefit from Google’s creation. Google Wave has paved the way for technology to be meaningfully used and hopefully, there will be greater emphasis placed on teacher education programmes where teachers are guided to become more competent and confident users of technology.
Finally completed my documentation video on the trip to Washington D.C for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Annual Conference 2009! One of the work assignments I thoroughly enjoyed; am already starting to reminisce about the whole experience. Bringing the video to work on Monday and hopefully with approval (from work side) I'll be able to share it online!
Children’s naptime.
Was seated at the dining area about 10m away, in stillness and solitude, when I heard two distinct shouts of my name, from the children’s toilet. Ran to the toilet to find a boy (who isn’t from my class) seated on the throne, bent forward, looking at me. ”i poo poo”. Supposed he realized I was the only one who could save him. (Message sent from Cynthia’s iPhone)
Bringing nature into the classroom. I like how they complement, enrich and create a sense of comfort in the learning environment.
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Promised 4yo that I’ll read the book with him after he left school reluctantly yesterday because we didn’t get to read it. So, when I went to his class this evening it was the first thing he waved at me, excitedly.
Me: (singing) We’ve got the whole world in our hands… (x4)
4yo: (looking dead serious) this is very dangerous.
