Jose Rodriguez

It’s Elementary #28 was a preview of an upcoming conference, Educon2.1. The conference will be held in Philadelphia at the Science Leadership Academy. Chris Lehman, the principal at SLA, was on our show. Also on the show were SLA teachers Tim Best and Zac Chase. One of the innovative sessions will be a virtual session led by Julie Lindsay, Qatar, and Vicki Davis, Georgia. Vicki was on the show to preview her session, which will be a connection between Educon and the Flat Classroom Conference in Qatar. Vicki and Julie will both be in Qatar and connect virtually with Educon. This is modeling the very skills we want the children in our schools to exhibit. More information about our show is available at It’s Elementary on edublogs.

Click on Attachment to view Chat

It’s Elementary show # 27 was a discussion with Angela Maiers about
21st century literacies. Angela is located in Clive, Iowa and currently
works as an independent consultant with both schools and employers. She
explained the brain research that is the foundation for these literacy
strategies was first discussed in the literature five decades ago. 
Angela divides these literacies into several important categories

This week our guests were Kathy Cassidy from Moose Jaw SK , a grade 1 teacher, Leah Welch from Hamden Maine, a grade 1 teacher and formerly a kindergarten teacher, and Amanda Marrinan from Brisbane Australia who teaches 6 and 7 year olds. These teachers do amazing things with their students - blogging, video, moodle, google docs, and more. Kathy, Leah and Amanda sharedtheir practice and talked about the details in how they make things work. The time flew as we all listened to the stories of their work with young children.

This show featured Clif Mims, a professor at Memphis State University, and Bethany Smith, an Instructional Technologist at North Carolina State University. Both of them work with pre-service teachers to help them learn about how to effectively use technology in the classroom.

We started off with our backgrounds, and what we were required to do vis-a-vis technology in our pre-service. Then we looked at these essential questions:

• Are pre-service teachers being well prepared for entering k12 classrooms today.?
• Are pre-service teachers bored in college lectures? Does this affect entry into the field?
• What are your recommendations for best preparing pre-service teachers?

Bethany felt that teachers needed to have a PLN through Ning, or another service, to go to. Clif thought they needed to see examples of teacher who are using technology successfully. Alice felt that with the advent of more scripted/prescribed curriculum, teachers needed to see what project-based learning looked like. It was a great discussion, and the text chat log below includes comments from teachers who are taking a class on education technology.