cc licensed flickr photo shared by somegeekintn
Writing for an authentic audience.
(This could also be posted under “connections” and “innovation” as well)
On our grade 3 classroom blog, Daniel L. recently shared his thoughts about powerful questions and his learning on Tunisia. He ended the post with the following question:
After we are all done researching we will all share what we learned. I’m wanting to learn more about Ramadan!
Seeing all the amazing comments on this post from parents and educators, I received a tweet from Jabiz Raisdana with the following:
@gcouros Left a comment. Let me know if he wants follow up. Maybe a Skype call?
Jumping all over this opportunity, our grade 3 teacher and myself hurried to set up all of the appropriate software and hardware to make this happen for our students. The students worked with their teacher to set up some powerful questions that they could ask Jabiz and we had a fantastic time speaking with him! It was truly a great experience for our school and I am looking forward to the snowball effect that this is going to have creating more of these types of opportunities for our students.
I have talked several times about how the effective use of technology actually builds relationships as opposed to isolating us from one another. Jabiz and I have never talked other than through Twitter, and it was amazing how comfortable we were with one another. This relationship led to our students being able to connect to someone who actually could tell us about their experiences Ramadan and living in a different culture.. I will take the conversation over a textbook any time.
I am so proud of how our teachers are willing to continuously try new things and take risks in their learning, and how are students are inspiring our school as well as outside. Education has never been more exciting for me and I am inspired over and over again by those that I am connected with, both within our own learning community and around the world.
Thanks so much to Jabiz for taking his Friday night (11pm) to answer questions from our students (that’s passion about learning!).
Have you started your classroom blog yet?
Check out the blog post that shares the video of our conversation with Jabiz. I am so proud of our students and the work that they have done for this opportunity.
