2.0 or not 2.0?

We are going to be studying Shakespeare next week.

First a knowledge harvest about Shakespeare using my bubbl.us account that I will share with my students.


They can add to it and I am going to look into embedding it into their wikis. I want to try http://www.exploratree.org.uk/ and see if that is better.

Then we are going to split the class into groups to find out about the following topics:

• Shakespeare's life
• Life in his lifetime
• The Plays
• The Language Legacy
• The theatres of the age

The first thing the different groups have to do is come up with their own list of questions and areas of study that they want to structure their research around. They can elect one of the group to start a bubbl.us web who will in turn invite the rest of the group to share the document and collaborate in its development.

My real drive is to develop the questioning skills of the students. I am considering using VoiceThreads of the plots with comments about the scenes and opinions about the characters' actions to layer the meaning beyond a simple retelling?

Wordles showing frequency of characters' involvement in each scene?

It's About Time

Starting this blog is my way of making sense of the world as a teacher so that I can be part of the future of education...now.

There is a lot of talk of Personal Learning Networks. I realised, and that must sound strange, that I was trying to create one for myself and, in fact, I had gone quite a bit down the road to developing a network of feelers that clutched onto ideas and practices that I am keen to evaluate and adapt for my teaching. However, with all this information, bookmarks, RSS feeds and tweeple I follow there was not enough time dedicated to actually thinking. Thinking then doing. That's the plan.

This blog is an attempt to redress the situation and allow space for my thoughts to be distilled so that the learning that takes place in my classroom and in the wider arena is enhanced by the technology that I try to harness.

There. I did it.

Blog #00001.