Erin Thompson's Profile

In a 21st-century learning environment, all students are able to learn. Project-based learning allows students to acquire 21st-century skills in the context of real-world scenarios, and the integration of video and other media to support instruction links students with outside resources and enables teachers to address many learning styles at once. In fact, the 21st-century learning environment doesn’t just wait for teachable moments; it literally creates them at will.

Many of these sites require a higher-than-average set of teacher tech skills or extra monitoring to assure student “safety.” TeachersFirst Edge features these "tools on the edge,” and offers ideas for using them safely and effectively as yet another approach to teaching. This is the world your students already know. Try teaching in their vernacular.

Class Chatter: The first thing I noticed when the class started using Twitter was how conversations continued inside and outside of class. Most of these conversations were not directly related to class material, but many were tangentially related.

Because Twitter is always on, and gets pushed to your cell phone if you set it up this way, it is a good way to get instant feedback. I was prepping for a lecture and wanted to know if students shared a particular movie reference, I asked via Twitter and got instant responses. Students can also use this when doing their classwork, trying to understand the material.