How Did a Couple of Veteran Classroom Teachers End Up in a Space Like This? Extraordinary Intersections Between Learning, Social Software and Teaching

Abstract

As teachers in the twenty-first century, we are witnessing and embracing a period of transition and transformation, a period of chaos and order, which has given us an opportunity to examine what it is we do with our learners, why we do what we do, and to question how we might be able to do it better. We ask what it means to teach in a world where everyone and everything is interconnected, or as Nelson (1974) calls it, ‘intertwingled’. What tensions present themselves in the classroom when we invite into our teaching spaces the user-centric, social software tools our learners are already using to communicate, collaborate, and play with their peers? What possibilities and what impediments are created in this highly participatory, creative, ‘mashed-up’, hyper-networked world that parallels, encircles and interconnects with our face-to-face teaching space? How is our teaching transformed when we engage with each other and the world without boundaries, borders or hierarchies? This article will explore the classroom blogging adventures of two teachers participating in the metamorphosis of the learning experience; a shedding of the cocoon of antiquated, teacher-centric models of teaching and learning. We will demonstrate how an emergent learner-centric, community-focused teaching and learning model provides a boundary-less series of places where the teacher and the learner, the class and the community outside of the classroom, create and transform knowledge together.

Publisher

Australian Flexible Learning Framework

Publication Date

1-1-2007

Publication Title

Knowledge Tree: an e-Journal of Learning Innovation

Department

Hispanic Studies

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Blogging, Social media, Learner-centric teaching, Participatory, Student-centric, Project based learning, Edublogging, Web 2.0, Language learning, Teaching, Learning

Language

English

Format

text

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